Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Dear Reader,
With the debate over the nuclear deal with Iran continuing, editor Gary Rosenblatt looks at the fault lines the deal is creating in the Jewish community, and whether, given those divisions, the notion of "one Jewish people" still holds. Also on the Iran deal, staff writer Stewart Ain looks at how Congress and Jewish organizations are reacting with about a month to go before the congressional vote.Gary Rosenblatt
Iran Deal Driving Jews Farther Apart
As Israel and U.S. interests diverge, so too do the ties that bind Jewish community together.
GARY ROSENBLATT
EDITOR AND PUBLISHER
Gary Rosenblatt
One of the lessons learned from the intense debate over the Iran nuclear deal is that there is a serious and growing divide within American Jewry. In large part it’s between those who are active in Jewish and Israeli life, and those who are not. This gap is increasingly evident in our widely divergent views on Israel, U.S. foreign policy, and the merits of the agreement with Tehran.
Indeed, members of each group find it hard to believe that fellow religionists can actually see things any other way than the way they do, and they often base their deeply divergent views on “Jewish values.”
The activists are strongly opposed to the deal as posing a mortal danger to Israel and a long-term threat to the U.S. How, they wonder, can large numbers — and perhaps a majority — of their fellow Jews support the deal? They also can’t imagine why the large majority of American Jews voted for and continue to support President Obama, especially when it comes to his Mideast policies and treatment of Israel, which they consider a disaster, intentional or not.
I define “activists” here as involved members of synagogues and Jewish organizations, and/or those who visit Israel on a regular basis, attend Jewish lectures and other programs in the community, follow Israel news closely in the media, choose political candidates in large part based on their position on Israel, etc.
You get the picture. I am generalizing here but these people as a rule tend to be more politically conservative and religiously observant and are more hawkish on Israel. And they are generally older. A large majority of the Orthodox community fits this description, with many of its members visiting Israel frequently and having relatives or close friends living in Israel (including West Bank communities). Within American Orthodoxy there is little debate about Jerusalem’s settlement policies or, for that matter, about the belief that President Obama is no friend of Israel. (The bigger discussion may be over whether or not he is a Muslim.)
We don’t need more polls to tell us that the activists are far more opposed to the nuclear deal than other Jews, though they are smaller in number. (How curious that most of the poll results tend to show American Jewish views in sync with those of whichever group sponsored the survey.)
And for those of us living in the metropolitan New York area, a center of national Jewish organizational life, and home to such a large Orthodox community, we sometimes forget we are living in a big Jewish bubble — the exception to, rather than the rule of, American Jewish attitudes.
According to the Pew study of American Jews, more than 90 percent are proud to be Jewish. The great majority are liberal in their politics and religious practices, they support and feel an affinity for Israel, and trace their moral and ethical values to Judaism. In choosing a political candidate, studies show that their primary interest is party affiliation. According to the Pew survey, 70 percent identify themselves as Democrats (compared to 49 percent of the overall American public; 22 percent of Jews lean Republican). Forty-nine percent of Jews say they are liberals (compared to 22 percent of the total population). These Jews say they are motivated by justice, equality and opposition to minority discrimination, which they often ascribe to Jewish values. Seventy-three percent of American Jews say remembering the Holocaust is essential to their Jewishness, while only 43 percent say that caring about Israel is essential to their Jewishness.
“Perhaps most telling is that most Jews don’t feel the United States needs to be closer to Israel,” noted an article in The Guardian in 2013, when the Pew report was issued. “Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of Jewish Americans feel that U.S. support for Israel is either ‘about right’ or too much. This holds across all age groups, and it matches attitudes in the population at large.”
What the Iran debate seems to be illuminating is that on this crucial issue, the strategic interests of America and Israel are diverging, perhaps more starkly than at any time in recent memory. And the fault lines in the Jewish community reflect that split.
It’s hard to say how much has changed in the two years since the Pew study came out. But it’s worth noting that during that time the relationship between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has become openly contentious and increasingly worrisome to those who recognize the supreme importance of strong U.S.-Israel ties.
Some blame the president, some blame the prime minister, and there is significant evidence to support critics on both sides. We are in a bad time. We have reached a low point in U.S.-Israel relations when the administration is suggesting that Jewish groups and Israeli officials, by lobbying against the Iran deal, may be to blame if the Iran deal falls apart and leads to another Mideast war. And the Israeli prime minister is so aligned with the Republicans in Congress that he feels he can’t back down now, even though bipartisan support has been the bedrock of Israeli foreign policy for decades, and the pressure to repair the relationship with the White House has never been greater.
For now the debate goes on and gets more personal, nastier, uglier. We long for it to be over, one way or another, and to begin the vital effort of healing the wounds and mending Washington-Jerusalem ties.
Let’s start closer to home, though. Even within our own community we need to recognize and address the divide that separates us, one from the other. It has become increasingly difficult to talk about collective “American Jewish attitudes” and shared “Jewish values” when there are such deep differences, not only in our outward views but also in how we define ourselves as Jews.
These issues tend to arise during moments of crisis, and then subside.
But they’re not going away. Dealing with them now may be our last chance before we reach the point where we no longer fit the definition of one Jewish people.
Gary@jewishweek.org
National
L.I.’s Rice Joins Dems Against Deal
Freshman rep part of Israel delegation; B’nai B’rith raps pact but no consensus at Presidents Conference.
STEWART AIN
STAFF WRITER
Rice: Continued sanctions can yield “a better deal.”
Freshman Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-L.I.) returned from Israel Tuesday saying the briefing she attended with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only reinforced her conviction that the Iran nuclear pact is a bad deal.
“I thought he made a very compelling case to everyone in the room,” Rice told The Jewish Week. “I had felt confident in my decision when I made it. I had given it a tremendous amount of thought, and nothing I heard or saw caused me to waiver in that at all.”
Rice was one of 22 Democratic members of Congress who flew to Israel last week for a trip sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, the charitable arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The group sponsors such trips every two years for freshman members of the House.
It also brought over 36 Republican House members, and the two trips overlapped by one day.
The visits, which were organized months ago, came at a fortuitous time because they afforded Israeli leaders a chance to explain their opposition to the Iran nuclear deal just weeks before Congress is to vote on whether to approve it. Democrats are expected to be the swing vote because most Republicans already oppose it.
Rice said she opposed it for three reasons: it would “merely pause” and not eliminate Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon; sanctions that would be lifted under the agreement would not have the same crippling economic impact if they were restored because Iran cheated, and uncertainty that Iran could even be spotted cheating.
She added that “crippling sanctions brought Iran to the table — and they can again. There is no question that if we stick together and maintain these sanctions that we can get a better deal.”
In her opposition, Rice joins local fellow Democratic Reps. Grace Meng, Elliot Engel, Nita Lowey and Steve Israel, as well as Ted Deutch of Florida and Brad Sherman of California. Sen. Charles Schumer also announced his opposition.
A number Jewish Democrats in Congress, among them California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, have announced their support for the plan.
In explaining his decision to oppose it, Schumer said in a statement that he was concerned with as long as a 24-day delay before International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors would be allowed to inspect a suspected covert nuclear weapons site. Such a delay, he argued, “would hinder our ability to determine precisely what was being done at that site.”
In addition, he said, he was troubled that the U.S. could not unilaterally demand an inspection of a site, and feared that the provision for a “snapback” of sanctions in the event of an Iranian violation “seem cumbersome and difficult to use.”
The agreement expires in 15 years and Schumer said Iran, having been freed of sanctions for a decade and a half, would be “stronger financially and better able to advance a robust nuclear program. Even more importantly, the agreement would allow Iran, after 10 to 15 years, to be a nuclear threshold state with the blessing of the world community.”
But Secretary of State John Kerry, who led the American negotiating team, said here Tuesday that Iran is a “nuclear threshold nation today” and that it achieved that capability at a time when the U.S. and Iran did not speak with one another.
In remarks at a discussion hosted by Thomson Reuters, a multimedia group, Kerry scoffed at the suggestion that further negotiations would produce a “better deal.”
“It’s not going to happen,” he insisted. “There is not a better deal. [Former President] George Bush tried in 2008 to get a better deal and Iran went from 104 to 19,000 centrifuges. … We are confident we will know what they are doing. We are safer with this deal than without it.
Kerry said President Obama told him that he was prepared to use the military option to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, “but he said we owe it to the world to try to get an agreement … which is not based on trust, but which is verifiable. I believe we have that agreement and that we have enough intelligence capacity to know what they are doing.”
Regarding Israel’s opposition, Kerry said he has spoken with Netanyahu “and we agreed to disagree. But the U.S. has huge stakes in that region and we will never allow it to be threatened. We are engaged with them [Iran] and will be deeply engaged pushing back on their nefarious activities.”
Meanwhile, Jewish organizations have been slow in taking sides. B’nai B’rith International announced its opposition on Monday, saying: “We have doubts about elevating the international status of Iran, which has done nothing to prove it will keep its word.”
It joined the Orthodox Union, the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in rejecting the agreement.
The most prominent Jewish group in favor of the agreement is J Street, the self-described pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby, which said it believes the agreement “demonstrates that a core security interest of the United States — ensuring Iran does not get a nuclear weapon — can be achieved through diplomacy and without the use of military force. This deal makes the United States, Israel and the entire world safer, and it would be highly irresponsible for Congress to reject it.”
The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly took no position, issuing a statement calling on Congress to carefully review the agreement to “ensure that Iran will be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
Similarly, the Jewish Federations of North America urged “Congress to give this accord its utmost scrutiny.”
Morton Klein, president of the ZOA, said he was upset that so many Jewish organizations haven’t taken a stand against the pact when there is an “existential threat to Israel which could result in the massacre of millions of Jews and the deaths of large numbers of Americans and others.”
“It is as frightening and disgraceful as the deafening silence of Jewish leaders during the ’30s and ’40s,” he added, referring to the Holocaust.
A number of other Jewish groups said they intend to take a position but are still studying the agreement.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is now polling its 51 member organizations to see if there is a consensus, according to Malcolm Hoenlein, its executive vice chairman.
Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said in a statement that his organization is in the process of consulting with its leaders and “listening to expert voices reflecting the range of views on the deal. We are doing this in a thoughtful and deliberative fashion and as expeditiously as possible.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that at this point his organization is opposed to the agreement “unless the administration can answer” a series of questions about it.
Greenblatt said he expected the ADL to formulate a position “very soon.”
Greenblatt said also that he found “very problematic” the rhetoric directed at Schumer from progressives since he announced his opposition to the deal last Thursday evening. People on various social media sites have called him a variety of names including “traitor.”
President Obama said last week that opponents of the agreement are pushing for war with Iran just as they did in advance of the war with Iraq, and he suggested that AIPAC was behind the advertising blitz against to the deal.
Abraham Foxman, the immediate former national director of the ADL, was quoted by CNN as saying Obama’s rhetoric could end up “fueling and legitimizing anti-Semitic stereotypes out there that Jews are warmongers.”
Robert Cohen, AIPAC’s president, said in a statement that AIPAC’s facts are “well-substantiated and accurate” and that the TV ad by its advertising partner, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, does not mention Obama “in any way.” In addition, he said AIPAC took no position leading up to the Iraq War.
Recent polls have found that the Jewish community and most Americans are opposed to the Iran agreement. A poll released Tuesday by Monmouth University found that 41 percent of Americans believe Iran got more out of the deal than the U.S. And it found that 61 percent of Americans don’t trust Iran to abide by the agreement.
stewart@jewishweek.org
In the wake of the death of a 16-year-old girl at Jerusalem's Gay Pride Parade, Israel correspondent Michele Chabin looks at the gay community and the Jerusalem municipality as they struggle with what is seen as a "very complicated relationship." And closer to home, staff writer Hannah Dreyfus reports on a memorial service here for Shira Banki, the teenager killed at the parade; it was noteworthy because of the presence of an official from the central Orthodox rabbinical group.Israel News
For Jerusalem LGBTs, Hope Alongside The Fear
In wake of stabbings, gay community and city leaders struggling with ‘very complex relationship.’
MICHELE CHABIN
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Members of Jerusalem’s LGBT community and their supporters gathered in the city center Sunday night for a memorial vigi.
Jerusalem — A week after an ultra-Orthodox man stabbed six participants in Jerusalem’s July 30 Gay Pride march, Klil Halevy, a 17-year-old Jerusalemite, was still reeling from the tragedy.
“We saw everything,” said Halevy, who describes herself as “pan-sexual.” She and several high school friends attended a memorial vigil Sunday night in Zion Square for Shiri Banki, the 16-year-old teen stabbed to death by Yishai Schlissel, the same ultra-Orthodox man who stabbed participants in the 2005 Jerusalem Gay Pride march.
“We saw five of the six people who were stabbed,” at the bottom of Ben Yehuda Street, where police had set up metal barriers meant to provide a layer of security, Halevy said. “We saw Shira’s blood gushing. We saw two guys jump the killer. I froze.”
Halevy said she now fears being near men with beards — Schlissel, who was transferred to a psychiatric institution this week, is bearded — “which is pretty difficult since I work at the zoo which is filled with religious families with beards. Nice religious families, but I’m scared.”
The teen, who sports several piercings, said she’s “terrified” to show any affection to her girlfriend in public places. Nor does she feel safe enough to venture out into the streets of Jerusalem again dressed as a male, as she did, for the very first time, during the march.
Members of Jerusalem’s LGBT community say the stabbings drove home what they have always felt: that many of the city’s residents are hostile to them and their lifestyle. It’s what makes living a gay life in Jerusalem far different from living one in Tel Aviv, which is seen as far more tolerant towards the LGBT community.
A Hebrew-language video that’s been making the rounds on social media since the murder appears to bear this out.
In the video, the camera follows two man dressed in tank tops walking hand-in-hand through the most popular streets of downtown Jerusalem. Along the way dozens of people turn and stare, and several male onlookers shout “Homo” and curse at the couple.
The video is reminiscent of a French video that was viewed widely in which a journalist posing as a religious French Jew experiences anti-Semitism on the streets of France. The gay couple in Jerusalem experience much more verbal abuse than the Frenchman.
Since the stabbings, the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance has gone into overdrive to meet the needs of the city’s LGBT community, said Open House spokesman Tom Kening.
“What happened in Jerusalem hit a nerve and exposed a lot of the anger, pain and fear that was always there but which we had become a bit complacent about,” Kening said.
Looking back over the past decade “we realized not much has changed. There is still incitement, still delegitimization of our community. There’s a very mainstream — not just ultra-Orthodox — perception in Israeli society that there shouldn’t be an LGBT community in Jerusalem, and if there is one, we should keep our heads down and not be public about it. This feeling has seeped into society, and some suggestive people act on it.”
Kening said LGBT Jerusalemites have experienced a wide range of reactions to the attacks.
“There’s been a lot of communal mourning, spontaneous protests. There was a big rally at Zion Square Saturday night and a vigil there on Sunday.”
The Open House has become a focal point for community members trying to process what happened and organize a response. Since the attack, the grassroots community center has been open nearly around the clock to provide counseling and serve as a refuge.
The administrators decided to temporarily close the center’s HIV clinic to free up psychologists, social workers and volunteers to help community members, many of them teens, traumatized by the stabbings. They recruited additional volunteers, from mental health professionals to community activists, via Facebook.
“We’ve all been in crisis mode, working 20-hour days,” Kening acknowledged.
Kening said representatives of the Jerusalem Municipality reached out to the Open House immediately after the attack, but whether the municipality will heed requests from the LGBT community remains a question mark.
“The municipality promised to meet our needs and we’ve had some discussions” about how to make Jerusalem a more welcoming place for LGBTs, the spokesman said, declining to elaborate. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
The LGBT community has always had a “very complex relationship” with the municipality, he said.
“In recent years it has become more cooperative, but they have never really wanted us to participate in cultural events or other things the city organizes,” he said.
The municipality displayed “a lack of sensitivity” by holding a previously scheduled street party right under the windows of the Open House the day after the stabbings, he added.
“Our community center was full of traumatized kids who’d spent the night on our couches. Then [the municipality] posted a video online showing how Jerusalem was celebrating.”
While the LGBT community didn’t expect the city to stop functioning during the past week, it would have appreciated a reference to the attack on the municipality’s web page and on Facebook, Kening said.
Mayor Nir Barkat condemned the stabbings and said, “We will continue to support all groups and communities in Jerusalem and won’t be deterred by those who try perverse ways to prevent this. Clearly something went wrong here. The police will have to look into this deeply.”
The municipality’s spokesman’s office told The Jewish Week “the Jerusalem Municipality embraces the Open House at this difficult time” and has scheduled a meeting under the authority of the municipality’s head.
“The municipality provides financial support for the Open House each year, according to set and transparent criteria and activities, as it does for other groups which meet the criteria. The mayor’s door is always open for The Open House. There have been a number of meetings in the past and there will be more after he returns from abroad to give aid to the community as needed.”
Jerusalem’s LGBT community members hope some good will emerge from the tragedy.
One positive outcome has been the self-reflection expressed by some Orthodox Jews, including rabbis who visited hospitalized victims.
Last week about 30 young adults, some ultra-Orthodox Jews from Jerusalem, some members of the LGBT community, met in the city center to discuss the tragedy and get to know one another.
During the encounter, which was organized by the Gesher and Chavura Tziburit organizations, a teenage girl from the LGBT community told the group she is experiencing “lots of fear and anger, but I came to try to listen and let it go,” according to Eytan Morgenstern, Gesher’s communications officer.
“One of the young ultra-Orthodox men who came opened up by saying, ‘I don’t feel the need to apologize, I don’t feel that the murder represents me in any way. But just as in the Torah it says that when a murdered person is found between cities, the closest one must take responsibility — so, too, I came here,” Morgenstern said.
“We understand it takes time for attitudes to change, and we think this might be the catalyst,” Kening said, noting that the municipality is now considering whether to introduce an LGBT tolerance educational program adapted by religious LGBT activists.
“There are reasons to be optimistic,” he said. New York
At LGBT Memorial Service, Orthodox Add To The Rainbow
RCA’s Rabbi Mark Dratch points to communal responsibility, says not the time to ‘retreat’ into defensive mode.
HANNAH DREYFUS
STAFF WRITER
A memorial service for Shira Banki, the 16-year-old stabbed and killed at Jerusalem's Gay parade. Congregation Beit Simchat Tora
When Sean Herzfeld, an openly gay Orthodox teenager from Westchester County, heard about Shira Banki, the 16-year-old who was stabbed and killed by a charedi protestor at Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade, he felt scared.
“I was sad, I was disappointed, but mostly I was really frightened,” said the rising junior at a local yeshiva high school. “It could have been me, or any one of my ally friends.”
Herzfeld spoke last Thursday night to a crowd of 300 at a memorial and solidarity rally for Banki at the LGBT Community Center in Lower Manhattan. Though there were only 150 seats, people flowed into the auditorium and stood pressed closely together, many wiping away tears as Herzfeld spoke. The crowd was diverse, with kippot, traditional women’s head coverings and rainbow flags sprinkling the crowd.
Herzfeld, an active member of JQY, a nonprofit organization that supports Orthodox LGBT Jews, recalled marching with his peers in the Salute to Israel Parade just two months earlier, waving a rainbow flag.
“Three days after the Israeli Day parade, I’d already resumed my usual teenage schedule including participating in school activities, extracurriculars and hanging out with friends,” he said. “Three days after participating in the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade, Shira Banki succumbed to her wounds on her hospital bed.”
The emotional memorial service brought together representatives from organizations representing a wide swath of the Jewish community, including Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, senior rabbi at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the largest LGBT synagogue, Rabbi Steven Greenberg, co-director of Eshel, an organization working towards the integration of LGBT Jews, and Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), America’s largest body of Orthodox rabbis.
Rabbi Dratch’s appearance, which marked the first time an RCA member spoke at a LGBT Center event, was considered a “historic” moment by many, especially in light of the RCA’s public statement of concern following the Supreme Court verdict on gay marriage in June. In the statement, the RCA rejected the court’s “redefinition of marriage” and cited it as a threat to Orthodox religious freedom.
Rabbi Dratch said he was “embarrassed” that his appearance at the ceremony was considered something special. Standing behind a podium draped with a rainbow flag, he spoke for five minutes denouncing the cultural influences that produce violent extremists and pointing to elements of communal responsibility for the tragedy.
“There are sins of commission and sins of omission,” he said, citing failure to “speak up” against pejorative or mocking comments as part of the problem. “Our community has been much too silent for much too long.”
He added that while the act of extreme violence might have been an aberration, it “festered in a community whose culture is too often pervaded by insensitivity, disrespect, vulgarity and intolerance.”
One attendee, who preferred to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, said it “blew her mind” that Rabbi Dratch was standing behind a rainbow flag.
Mordechai Levovitz, executive director of JQY and one of the event’s organizers, said that Rabbi Dratch’s remarks “more than rose to the occasion.” While he had spoken alongside Rabbi Dratch at a mental health conference in April, this was the first time he was officially representing the RCA, according to Levovitz.
“In the past, he was careful to say he was coming as an individual, and not necessarily to represent the organizations,” said Levovitz. “This time, we didn’t give organizations that option.”
A representative from the Orthodox Union and Yeshiva University president Richard Joel both said they would have liked to attend, but were traveling, according to Levovitz.
“There can be positive repercussions from this tragedy — the Orthodox world is beginning to understand the impact of negative messaging coming from the rabbinate,” he said. “It’s just not so simple to keep pushing away an already ostracized minority.”
Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist who has written extensively on gender and LGBT issues, said that those with severe mental illnesses do make use of the belief systems around them. “Racism, sexism and homophobia are all themes they could pick up on,” he said. Repeated moral condemnations can lead to anti-homosexual biases, heterosexism, and even anti-gay violence. “It becomes increasingly difficult for members of these groups to distinguish between the ‘sinner’ and the ‘sin’,” he said.
The attack at the Jerusalem parade has alerted people to the “unintended consequences” of hateful words and actions. He referred to the memorial service as an “amazing moment of dialogue.”
“What we saw on Thursday did not spring up overnight — it is the culmination of brave efforts to engage in dialogue for the past 10 years,” he said.
In Israel, several prominent Orthodox rabbis, including Jerusalem’s Chief Rabbi Aryeh Stern and Rabbi Benny Lau, strongly condemned the violence and pointed to the communal factors that may have contributed.
“It is not possible to say ‘our hands did not spill this blood,’” said Rabbi Lau, standing in Zion Square before hundreds of rainbow flags at a memorial rally for Banki and the Palestinian toddler killed in the West Bank. “Anyone who has been at a Sabbath table, or in a classroom, or in a synagogue, or at a soccer pitch, or in a club, or at a community center, and heard the racist jokes, the homophobic jokes, the obscene words, and didn’t stand up and stop it, he is a partner to this bloodshed.”
Miriam Wopenoff, a middle-aged chasidic woman from Crown Heights, stood in the crowd on Thursday night, a wad of tissues in her hand. She wore a long black skirt and a traditional black head covering. “I’m here to support friends from my community,” she said. “Many of them couldn’t be here.”
Zach B., who asked that we not use his full name for privacy reasons, just graduated high school and will be studying at a prominent Orthodox yeshiva in Israel in the fall. He attended the memorial service on Thursday night not knowing what to expect. Still, the weight of communal responsibility propelled him to go.
“It would be easier if we could just say ‘this guy was a nut job’ and be done with it,” he said, wearing a kipa, dark pants and button down shirt. “But we can’t wash our hands of what happened, until we try and make it better.”
Editorial intern Talia Lakritz contributed to this report.
Elsewhere in the paper, Stewart Ain reports on new efforts to get Poland to pay property restitution to the Jewish heirs of those who owned buildings there before the Holocaust.International
New Pressure On Poland For Property Restitution
N.Y. pols part of ‘sustained effort’ to bring issue to the fore.
STEWART AIN
STAFF WRITER
City Comptroller Scott Stringer, left, and State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. Getty Images
Lea Evron, a Holocaust survivor from Whitestone, Queens, has fought for years to win back title to the apartment building in Zywiec, Poland, her parents lost in the Holocaust. She finally won back the title in court, but the Polish government appealed.
After both an appeals court and the country’s supreme court rejected the appeals, a man who claims he owns the building filed his own appeal. He lost, but is appealing yet again.
“I don’t believe we’ll live to get anything — but maybe our grandchildren will,” said Evron’s husband, Jehuda.
Although 3 million Polish Jews were murdered in the Holocaust —more than from any other country — Poland remains the only country in the European Union that hasn’t passed a restitution law requiring private property confiscated by the Nazis or later nationalized by the Communists to be returned to the family or for the family to be compensated for it.
But in recent weeks there have been several significant developments that may increase pressure on the Polish government to finally deal with the issue.
Just last week, outgoing Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski — who in 2011 had called the lack of a restitution bill “a disgrace for Poland” — refused to sign into law a bill that would have severely restricted survivors and their heirs from reclaiming property in Warsaw that had been seized by the Nazis and then confiscated by the Communists that ruled Poland until 1989.
Ronald Lauder, chairman of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, noted that Komorowski referred the bill to the country’s Constitutional Tribunal to see whether the legislation would violate the constitution.
Gideon Taylor, the WJRO’s chief of operations, said, “For us the issue is not whether the legislation is constitutional or not but rather the fact that it is unjust.”
Passed by parliament June 25, it would have set a six-month deadline for rightful owners or their heirs to participate in administrative proceedings for property claims filed by December 1988.
Taylor pointed out that survivors and their heirs might today not even know such claims had been filed decades ago, and that this legislation would prevent them from pursuing their claim if they did not act within six months. In addition, it would end the practice of appointing a trustee to represent an heir who has not been identified. And it would have also denied owners the right to seek the return of large categories of property, including those in public use.
“The reality is that most people can’t recover their property because in order to succeed in court it is necessary to prove that the confiscation of their property by Poland’s former Communist government was incorrectly carried out because of a technical error,” Taylor noted.
More pressure on Poland came two weeks ago when the heads of three of the largest government pension funds in the United States called upon Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz to fulfill the country’s “obligation” to the survivors and heirs whose property was confiscated by the Nazis.
The three officials are New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and California State Treasurer John Chiang. Together, Stringer and DiNapoli manage pension funds totaling $340 billion.
The letter, dated July 30, is the “first step,” Stringer told The Jewish Week, pointing out that one of his predecessors, Alan Hevesi, used his position to leverage concessions on restitution claims from Switzerland in the 1990s. Hevesi threatened to move New York funds from Swiss banks and to withhold licenses the banks would need to operate in the state.
Their letter comes nearly a month after a bipartisan group of 42 members of Congress wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry to urge that the State Department continue its efforts to ensure the restitution of Jewish communal, private and heirless property seized by the Nazis throughout Europe.
The lawmakers wrote that many survivors in the U.S. “and around the world live in poverty knowing the property that was stolen from them and their families remains in the hands of governments and private owners who have no rightful claim.”
Among those signing the letter were New York Democratic Reps. Steve Israel, Jerrold Nadler, Nita Lowey, Joseph Crowley, Grace Meng, Kathleen Rice, Carolyn Maloney, Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano. Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin also signed.
Stringer told The Jewish Week that approximately 60,000 Holocaust survivors live in the New York area and that about half of them live at or below the poverty level.
All of these actions are part of what Taylor called a “new sustained effort to hopefully get this issue back on the national and international agenda.” He said it is “hard to estimate how many people would be eligible” to apply for property restitution, but that “most of the claimants would not be Jewish.”
Poland has long claimed it doesn’t have the financial means to make property restitution payments. In fact, Taylor cited a newspaper interview published in February by the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in which Irena Lipowicz, Poland’s ombudsman for civil rights protection, quoted the Finance Ministry as estimating in 2012 that a uniform property restitution law “could cause a sudden increase in the public debt of 18 billion zlotys [more than $4 billion].”
But because the issue has not been dealt with, she said a “property restitution industry” has developed in which property owners cede their claims to profiteers who give them pennies on the dollar and then seek compensation from the government.
Restitution payments were meant as “a remedy for historical injustices,” Lipowicz said, “What kind of injustice is being redressed here?”
She noted that it is “usually the elderly” who are not wealthy enough for court battles who “become easy victims for potential ‘claim hunters,’ even targets of intimidation and coercion. … If we initiated property restitution, for example by enacting the bill that was once vetoed by President [Aleksander] Kwasniewski, of course probably with certain modifications, we could give everyone compensation, perhaps even in the amount of 20 percent of the value of the assets that were lost — if we cannot afford more. It is important for this to happen quickly, and above all, for everyone to be entitled to it, rather than for instance having 5 percent of former owners and their inheritors recovering 100 percent but the rest nothing.”
Although the 20 percent offer might “outrage certain former owners,” Lipowicz was quoted as saying it “is a way out of the stalemate.”
“And for very elderly owners, that 20 percent could represent a huge amount, greater than what is being proposed by the ‘claim hunters,’” she added. “It seems more fair than the situation today. … I have also made an impassioned appeal for parliament to reinitiate legislative work as it concerns property restitution … The time is now [while] ... we still have EU funding.”
Taylor said several governments — including Australia, the Great Britain and Canada — are now lending their support for private property restitution not only in Poland but also in other countries in Central and Eastern Europe that have such laws in whole or in part but are slow in processing claims.
A property restitution program in Poland would undoubtedly be more difficult than in any other country because its 3.3 million Jewish residents represented 10 percent of the population when Nazi Germany invaded on Sept. 1, 1939, according to Michael Berenbaum, former director of the Holocaust Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
“Imagine what a Herculean job it would be if they said they would return all the Jewish property,” he said. “That’s one reason they have been avoiding it.”
Taylor noted that Jews in Poland “lived in urban areas and so clearly they had a lot of property. Living in villages and towns they owned lots of buildings, factories and houses.”
Asked about the financial drain on Poland to make such private property restitution payments, Taylor said his organization has suggested ways to finance it through “issuing bonds and through paying it over a few years — creative solutions could be found to restitute property.”
“It is complicated process,” he added, “but it must be done.”
stewart@jewishweek.org
We also look at the strange silence surrounding Hillel President Eric Fingerhut's about-face decision to address J Street U. And in the arts, we profile a fascinating young blues guitarist - "Blind Boy" Paxton - who happens to wear a yarmulke and cook some mean Jewish soul food.National
Shhhh! Fingerhut’s Speaking At J Street
HANNAH DREYFUS
About face: Hillel’s Eric Fingerhut will speak at a J Street U conference next week. JTA
President of Hillel Eric Fingerhut’s decision to speak at J Street U’s Student Leadership Institute next week has everybody talking — just not to the press.
The announcement, which Fingerhut shared personally in an email last week, comes after his decision to pull out of a commitment to speak at J Street’s annual conference in March made headlines.
Fingerhut reportedly canceled under pressure from Hillel donors who object to J Street, a self-described pro-Israel, pro-peace lobbying group that advocates greater U.S. engagement toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal and criticizes Israel’s settlement policies.
This time around, he will address 120 national J Street student leaders on Aug. 17 and “discuss issues of mutual concern,” according to a statement put out by J Street.
Still, despite what many are hoping to be a fresh start, Fingerhut could not be reached for comment. Matthew Berger, a spokesman for Hillel, disseminated a brief statement expressing Fingerhut’s excitement to engage with student leaders. “Eric appreciates the invitation from J Street U and looks forward to meeting the students and engaging with them,” it said.
Mum’s the word from J Street as well. The group’s representatives and campus leaders have declined to comment, referring instead to a bland statement welcoming Fingerhut.
One senior Jewish communal official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the charged politics, said Fingerhut’s decision to speak is a “very good thing.”
“There’s a growing acknowledgement that students who are joining J Street U on campus are exactly the types of students we need to engage — progressive, invested, and passionate about Israel,” the official said.
J Street U student leaders are often the best advocates against the growing BDS movement, the official added. J Street officially opposes boycotting and divesting from Israeli products, while other left-wing organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace, strongly advocate for BDS on campus.
“Hillel can’t put out talking points about BDS that are essentially the same at J Street’s and at the same time not embrace these students,” the official said.
And, going forward, Hillel may not be able to ignore J Street U’s growing numbers. The group currently has a presence on 85 campuses across the country, and 1,100 students attended the organization’s last conference in March. Though these numbers are still dwarfed by Hillel’s (550 campuses, over 1,000 trained student and faculty staff) J Street U is quickly growing.
With the burgeoning BDS movement on college campuses, recognizing similarities between the two organizations may be more important than ever, some suggest.
“I’m glad that Eric seized the opportunity to meet with these students who, in addition to their involvement with J Street, are involved in many aspects of Jewish life on campus,” said Brian Cohen, the executive director of the Columbia/Barnard Hillel Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life. “He’s demonstrating Hillel’s commitment to working with students from diverse backgrounds and with diverse views.”
Said the community official: “Students shouldn’t be punished because of conspiracy theories against J Street. Halevi [if only] we should have the problem of too many Israel advocates.”
editor@jewishweek.orgMusic
The Bluesman With The Yarmulke
‘Blind Boy’ Paxton may be the only blues singer who dons a skullcap and cooks ‘kosher soul food.’ Oh, and he can play, too.
LEHMAN WEICHSELBAUM
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH WEEK
Old soul: Jerron Paxton is a rising blues star who honors his Jewish roots. Bill Steber
‘Blind Boy” Jerron Paxton is taking a call inside his Ridgewood, Queens, kitchen to answer a few questions. He talks while making rugelach, from scratch. “I make everything from scratch,” he says.
When not home baking, Paxton is likely to be the only black blues performer wearing a yarmulke you’ll see this year. Or any year.
And that’s just for starters.
Even inside a genre that emphasizes the solo artist, with the musical distinctiveness and force of personality that goes with the role, the 26-year-old Paxton stands out vividly. Unlike other musicians content to rearrange the occasional old standard, Paxton tirelessly plumbs buried collections in search of forgotten but noteworthy song material, not only from blues but from jazz, folk, country and pop music, and returns it to the world’s ear in his performances. In a milieu where the electric guitar has long ruled as virtually the sole accompanying instrument, Paxton hues resolutely to its classic acoustic forerunner, along with the banjo, piano, fiddle, harmonica, Cajun accordion and percussive “bones,” each of which he plays with practiced skill.
Paxton will play his second solo concert at B.B. King’s on Aug. 21. His CD, “Jerrod Paxton: Recorded Music for Your Entertainment,” is making steady rounds. He has played the folk festivals at Newport, Live Oak (Santa Barbara, Calif.) Calgary and Merlefest (celebrating the music of Doc and Merle Watson), as well as others across the continent and overseas. He’s now finishing a summer tenure as artistic director of the Port Townsend Festival in Washington State.
And then there’s that yarmulke.
“I come from an old family of Cajun Jews,” he explains. “They were Francophone and Sephardic.”
While he was born in Los Angeles, his maternal family roots hark back many generations inside Louisiana. He suspects that his clan’s origins may trace back to crypto-Jews from medieval Spain, but says, “The trail stops with my great grandfather. It’s complicated.”
He does say that he’s the only member of his family that he knows of who practices the rites of his Jewish heritage. “We were the only house in South Central [L.A.] with a mezuzah, as far as I know,” he adds. A small, devoted following of young religious Jews shows up at his shows.
The yarmulke, a broad, black affair seen conspicuously on the cover portrait of his CD, is a standard accoutrement at concerts, though not at his most recent gig at B.B. King’s (“too hot,” he says). He picks up bookings for Friday nights, calling himself “sporadically shomer Shabbos.” At the same time, while less than strict on dietary habits on the performance trail, describing himself as “kosher-ish,” he keeps kosher at home.
Paxton especially enjoys hosting dinners with his brand of “kosher soul food,” which features but is not limited to his homemade pastries. “My friends are my biggest connection,” he says.
A habitual late riser given his performing schedule, he attends afternoon services at Congregation Beth Aaron when at home in Ridgewood.
“I’m not as shomer Shabbos as I would like,” he concedes. “At the same time I believe the Almighty has gifted me with certain opportunities to pay the rent and to take care of my momma.”
His mother remains in Los Angeles. His father is “a very good drummer.” His parents have long been “happily separated.”
Paxton has toured Israel twice, including a visit earlier this year — “from Metula to Eilat” — to sold out shows.
For a young man in a hurry, Paxton knows how to take his time. He forages across the vast repository of historical music from the blues to virtually every category that fits the label of popular music. He pursues his research and takes the stage while dealing with longtime failing vision due to a faulty retina.
In June at B.B. King’s, New York’s premier blues showcase, Paxton, a black vest, suspenders and white shirt on his big frame, sat on a wooden chair surrounded by his various instruments and a rising number of empty bottles of Poland Spring water. The only electrification was a voice microphone and a lower mike for his guitar.
“Y’all know how to waltz? Anybody here old enough to remember how a train sounds?” he asked the audience, then proceeded to answer the questions on his harmonica, caroming from extended, arcing wails to bursting, staccato chords. Then, to the highly audible appreciation of the audience, he blew through a series of comparative riffs simulating the sounds of the Southern Mississippi versus the Sante Fe Railway whistles, the horn of a Model T Ford and “a little baby in the back seat who won’t hush up.”
Paxton kept his grooves fluid and deft, never straining for mere virtuosity. His playlist ranged from familiar standards like “”The Cat Came Back,” “Rye Whiskey,” “O Louisiana” (a variation on “O Susanna”), “Get Along Children” and Don Ho’s “Little Grass Shack” to more obscure but worthy titles such as “When the Cornpone’s Hot,” “Call Them Possum” and “My Lorena,” a Southern slave romance.
After the show Paxton mingled with fans for souvenir snapshots and inspection of his instruments, as well as selling signed CDs.
In his tart but candid account of his personal history, Paxton is far from reticent about his varied origins, but he declares: “I keep my music and my religion separate.” Asked about the state of mind that makes the sound of the music, he declines to probe too deeply for a common ground between the blues that blacks feel and the blues that Jews feel. “Everybody suffers,” he says. In the end, he lets his ears do the thinking. He mentions a recent hearing of a cut of Slovak music with a striking violin part. “That motherf---er has the blues,” he says.
He cites “Ashkenazic” music and its signature “crying clarinet.” “It’s tough, it’s bad, it’s horrible,” he says. “It releases you.
“It weeps and it’s happy in the same instant. There’s the mournful intro, and then the party kicks off.”
Otherwise, he says, “The blues are the soundtrack to black culture.” An apt illustration of Paxton’s aversion to fixing a “blues” label beyond that boundary was his choice of the song “One of These Days” at the B.B. King show. It’s the signature number of the celebrated and, to many ears, decidedly “bluesy” American-Jewish performer Sophie Tucker. Less well known is its authorship, that of black Canadian composer Shelton Brooks.
After leaving California for a stop at Marist College in upstate New York, Paxton enrolled in, then dropped out of Manhattan’s New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, while immersing himself in the city’s live music scene. The Jalopy bar in Red Hook, Brooklyn became a favorite haunt. His popularity and concert deals neatly followed. He was recently featured in a cover story by the Village Voice.
At the show’s break, B.B. King sound man John Yorke commented, “Blind Boy was born in what, 1989? And there has never been anybody more authentic in contemporary blues.”
Yorke added that Paxton was leading a “new vanguard” in a burgeoning movement of such authentic blues. As an example he cited the up-and-coming 20-year-old performer Solomon Hicks.
“He’s the real deal,” says David Burger, the composer of Jewish choral music who worked closely with both Richie Havens and Shlomo Carlebach. “He’s a great instrumentalist, knows the real blues and plays them with heart. He’s like what you might have heard from the great bluesmen of the ’20s and ’30s, without the scratchy sound of overplayed 78s. I don’t hear any specific Jewish influence on his music, per se. But he sings the blues, which has roughly the same connotation as tzuris.”
“The biggest folly in American culture today is how everything gets reduced to technical terms,” says Paxton. “But music, real music, is spiritual. Folk music means music that stands against academia. It’s music by and for the people.”
Talking time is over. The rugelach won’t bake themselves. “Shavua tov [good week],” Paxton signs off.
Blind Boy Paxton performs Aug. 21, 7:30 p.m., at B.B. King’s (Lucille’s Grill), 237 W. 42nd St., (212) 997-4144, bbkingblues.com.The Editors
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Gary Rosenblatt
Iran Deal Driving Jews Farther Apart
As Israel and U.S. interests diverge, so too do the ties that bind Jewish community together.
GARY ROSENBLATT
EDITOR AND PUBLISHER
Gary Rosenblatt
One of the lessons learned from the intense debate over the Iran nuclear deal is that there is a serious and growing divide within American Jewry. In large part it’s between those who are active in Jewish and Israeli life, and those who are not. This gap is increasingly evident in our widely divergent views on Israel, U.S. foreign policy, and the merits of the agreement with Tehran.
Indeed, members of each group find it hard to believe that fellow religionists can actually see things any other way than the way they do, and they often base their deeply divergent views on “Jewish values.”
The activists are strongly opposed to the deal as posing a mortal danger to Israel and a long-term threat to the U.S. How, they wonder, can large numbers — and perhaps a majority — of their fellow Jews support the deal? They also can’t imagine why the large majority of American Jews voted for and continue to support President Obama, especially when it comes to his Mideast policies and treatment of Israel, which they consider a disaster, intentional or not.
I define “activists” here as involved members of synagogues and Jewish organizations, and/or those who visit Israel on a regular basis, attend Jewish lectures and other programs in the community, follow Israel news closely in the media, choose political candidates in large part based on their position on Israel, etc.
You get the picture. I am generalizing here but these people as a rule tend to be more politically conservative and religiously observant and are more hawkish on Israel. And they are generally older. A large majority of the Orthodox community fits this description, with many of its members visiting Israel frequently and having relatives or close friends living in Israel (including West Bank communities). Within American Orthodoxy there is little debate about Jerusalem’s settlement policies or, for that matter, about the belief that President Obama is no friend of Israel. (The bigger discussion may be over whether or not he is a Muslim.)
We don’t need more polls to tell us that the activists are far more opposed to the nuclear deal than other Jews, though they are smaller in number. (How curious that most of the poll results tend to show American Jewish views in sync with those of whichever group sponsored the survey.)
And for those of us living in the metropolitan New York area, a center of national Jewish organizational life, and home to such a large Orthodox community, we sometimes forget we are living in a big Jewish bubble — the exception to, rather than the rule of, American Jewish attitudes.
According to the Pew study of American Jews, more than 90 percent are proud to be Jewish. The great majority are liberal in their politics and religious practices, they support and feel an affinity for Israel, and trace their moral and ethical values to Judaism. In choosing a political candidate, studies show that their primary interest is party affiliation. According to the Pew survey, 70 percent identify themselves as Democrats (compared to 49 percent of the overall American public; 22 percent of Jews lean Republican). Forty-nine percent of Jews say they are liberals (compared to 22 percent of the total population). These Jews say they are motivated by justice, equality and opposition to minority discrimination, which they often ascribe to Jewish values. Seventy-three percent of American Jews say remembering the Holocaust is essential to their Jewishness, while only 43 percent say that caring about Israel is essential to their Jewishness.
“Perhaps most telling is that most Jews don’t feel the United States needs to be closer to Israel,” noted an article in The Guardian in 2013, when the Pew report was issued. “Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of Jewish Americans feel that U.S. support for Israel is either ‘about right’ or too much. This holds across all age groups, and it matches attitudes in the population at large.”
What the Iran debate seems to be illuminating is that on this crucial issue, the strategic interests of America and Israel are diverging, perhaps more starkly than at any time in recent memory. And the fault lines in the Jewish community reflect that split.
It’s hard to say how much has changed in the two years since the Pew study came out. But it’s worth noting that during that time the relationship between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has become openly contentious and increasingly worrisome to those who recognize the supreme importance of strong U.S.-Israel ties.
Some blame the president, some blame the prime minister, and there is significant evidence to support critics on both sides. We are in a bad time. We have reached a low point in U.S.-Israel relations when the administration is suggesting that Jewish groups and Israeli officials, by lobbying against the Iran deal, may be to blame if the Iran deal falls apart and leads to another Mideast war. And the Israeli prime minister is so aligned with the Republicans in Congress that he feels he can’t back down now, even though bipartisan support has been the bedrock of Israeli foreign policy for decades, and the pressure to repair the relationship with the White House has never been greater.
For now the debate goes on and gets more personal, nastier, uglier. We long for it to be over, one way or another, and to begin the vital effort of healing the wounds and mending Washington-Jerusalem ties.
Let’s start closer to home, though. Even within our own community we need to recognize and address the divide that separates us, one from the other. It has become increasingly difficult to talk about collective “American Jewish attitudes” and shared “Jewish values” when there are such deep differences, not only in our outward views but also in how we define ourselves as Jews.
These issues tend to arise during moments of crisis, and then subside.
But they’re not going away. Dealing with them now may be our last chance before we reach the point where we no longer fit the definition of one Jewish people.
Gary@jewishweek.org.
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MUSINGS
Rabbi David Wolpe
For Jerusalem LGBTs, Hope Alongside The Fear
In wake of stabbings, gay community and city leaders struggling with ‘very complex relationship.’
MICHELE CHABIN
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Members of Jerusalem’s LGBT community and their supporters gathered in the city center Sunday night for a memorial vigi.
Jerusalem — A week after an ultra-Orthodox man stabbed six participants in Jerusalem’s July 30 Gay Pride march, Klil Halevy, a 17-year-old Jerusalemite, was still reeling from the tragedy.
“We saw everything,” said Halevy, who describes herself as “pan-sexual.” She and several high school friends attended a memorial vigil Sunday night in Zion Square for Shiri Banki, the 16-year-old teen stabbed to death by Yishai Schlissel, the same ultra-Orthodox man who stabbed participants in the 2005 Jerusalem Gay Pride march.
“We saw five of the six people who were stabbed,” at the bottom of Ben Yehuda Street, where police had set up metal barriers meant to provide a layer of security, Halevy said. “We saw Shira’s blood gushing. We saw two guys jump the killer. I froze.”
Halevy said she now fears being near men with beards — Schlissel, who was transferred to a psychiatric institution this week, is bearded — “which is pretty difficult since I work at the zoo which is filled with religious families with beards. Nice religious families, but I’m scared.”
The teen, who sports several piercings, said she’s “terrified” to show any affection to her girlfriend in public places. Nor does she feel safe enough to venture out into the streets of Jerusalem again dressed as a male, as she did, for the very first time, during the march.
Members of Jerusalem’s LGBT community say the stabbings drove home what they have always felt: that many of the city’s residents are hostile to them and their lifestyle. It’s what makes living a gay life in Jerusalem far different from living one in Tel Aviv, which is seen as far more tolerant towards the LGBT community.
A Hebrew-language video that’s been making the rounds on social media since the murder appears to bear this out.
In the video, the camera follows two man dressed in tank tops walking hand-in-hand through the most popular streets of downtown Jerusalem. Along the way dozens of people turn and stare, and several male onlookers shout “Homo” and curse at the couple.
The video is reminiscent of a French video that was viewed widely in which a journalist posing as a religious French Jew experiences anti-Semitism on the streets of France. The gay couple in Jerusalem experience much more verbal abuse than the Frenchman.
Since the stabbings, the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance has gone into overdrive to meet the needs of the city’s LGBT community, said Open House spokesman Tom Kening.
“What happened in Jerusalem hit a nerve and exposed a lot of the anger, pain and fear that was always there but which we had become a bit complacent about,” Kening said.
Looking back over the past decade “we realized not much has changed. There is still incitement, still delegitimization of our community. There’s a very mainstream — not just ultra-Orthodox — perception in Israeli society that there shouldn’t be an LGBT community in Jerusalem, and if there is one, we should keep our heads down and not be public about it. This feeling has seeped into society, and some suggestive people act on it.”
Kening said LGBT Jerusalemites have experienced a wide range of reactions to the attacks.
“There’s been a lot of communal mourning, spontaneous protests. There was a big rally at Zion Square Saturday night and a vigil there on Sunday.”
The Open House has become a focal point for community members trying to process what happened and organize a response. Since the attack, the grassroots community center has been open nearly around the clock to provide counseling and serve as a refuge.
The administrators decided to temporarily close the center’s HIV clinic to free up psychologists, social workers and volunteers to help community members, many of them teens, traumatized by the stabbings. They recruited additional volunteers, from mental health professionals to community activists, via Facebook.
“We’ve all been in crisis mode, working 20-hour days,” Kening acknowledged.
Kening said representatives of the Jerusalem Municipality reached out to the Open House immediately after the attack, but whether the municipality will heed requests from the LGBT community remains a question mark.
“The municipality promised to meet our needs and we’ve had some discussions” about how to make Jerusalem a more welcoming place for LGBTs, the spokesman said, declining to elaborate. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
The LGBT community has always had a “very complex relationship” with the municipality, he said.
“In recent years it has become more cooperative, but they have never really wanted us to participate in cultural events or other things the city organizes,” he said.
The municipality displayed “a lack of sensitivity” by holding a previously scheduled street party right under the windows of the Open House the day after the stabbings, he added.
“Our community center was full of traumatized kids who’d spent the night on our couches. Then [the municipality] posted a video online showing how Jerusalem was celebrating.”
While the LGBT community didn’t expect the city to stop functioning during the past week, it would have appreciated a reference to the attack on the municipality’s web page and on Facebook, Kening said.
Mayor Nir Barkat condemned the stabbings and said, “We will continue to support all groups and communities in Jerusalem and won’t be deterred by those who try perverse ways to prevent this. Clearly something went wrong here. The police will have to look into this deeply.”
The municipality’s spokesman’s office told The Jewish Week “the Jerusalem Municipality embraces the Open House at this difficult time” and has scheduled a meeting under the authority of the municipality’s head.
“The municipality provides financial support for the Open House each year, according to set and transparent criteria and activities, as it does for other groups which meet the criteria. The mayor’s door is always open for The Open House. There have been a number of meetings in the past and there will be more after he returns from abroad to give aid to the community as needed.”
Jerusalem’s LGBT community members hope some good will emerge from the tragedy.
One positive outcome has been the self-reflection expressed by some Orthodox Jews, including rabbis who visited hospitalized victims.
Last week about 30 young adults, some ultra-Orthodox Jews from Jerusalem, some members of the LGBT community, met in the city center to discuss the tragedy and get to know one another.
During the encounter, which was organized by the Gesher and Chavura Tziburit organizations, a teenage girl from the LGBT community told the group she is experiencing “lots of fear and anger, but I came to try to listen and let it go,” according to Eytan Morgenstern, Gesher’s communications officer.
“One of the young ultra-Orthodox men who came opened up by saying, ‘I don’t feel the need to apologize, I don’t feel that the murder represents me in any way. But just as in the Torah it says that when a murdered person is found between cities, the closest one must take responsibility — so, too, I came here,” Morgenstern said.
“We understand it takes time for attitudes to change, and we think this might be the catalyst,” Kening said, noting that the municipality is now considering whether to introduce an LGBT tolerance educational program adapted by religious LGBT activists.
“There are reasons to be optimistic,” he said. New York
At LGBT Memorial Service, Orthodox Add To The Rainbow
RCA’s Rabbi Mark Dratch points to communal responsibility, says not the time to ‘retreat’ into defensive mode.
HANNAH DREYFUS
STAFF WRITER
A memorial service for Shira Banki, the 16-year-old stabbed and killed at Jerusalem's Gay parade. Congregation Beit Simchat Tora
When Sean Herzfeld, an openly gay Orthodox teenager from Westchester County, heard about Shira Banki, the 16-year-old who was stabbed and killed by a charedi protestor at Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade, he felt scared.
“I was sad, I was disappointed, but mostly I was really frightened,” said the rising junior at a local yeshiva high school. “It could have been me, or any one of my ally friends.”
Herzfeld spoke last Thursday night to a crowd of 300 at a memorial and solidarity rally for Banki at the LGBT Community Center in Lower Manhattan. Though there were only 150 seats, people flowed into the auditorium and stood pressed closely together, many wiping away tears as Herzfeld spoke. The crowd was diverse, with kippot, traditional women’s head coverings and rainbow flags sprinkling the crowd.
Herzfeld, an active member of JQY, a nonprofit organization that supports Orthodox LGBT Jews, recalled marching with his peers in the Salute to Israel Parade just two months earlier, waving a rainbow flag.
“Three days after the Israeli Day parade, I’d already resumed my usual teenage schedule including participating in school activities, extracurriculars and hanging out with friends,” he said. “Three days after participating in the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade, Shira Banki succumbed to her wounds on her hospital bed.”
The emotional memorial service brought together representatives from organizations representing a wide swath of the Jewish community, including Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, senior rabbi at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the largest LGBT synagogue, Rabbi Steven Greenberg, co-director of Eshel, an organization working towards the integration of LGBT Jews, and Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), America’s largest body of Orthodox rabbis.
Rabbi Dratch’s appearance, which marked the first time an RCA member spoke at a LGBT Center event, was considered a “historic” moment by many, especially in light of the RCA’s public statement of concern following the Supreme Court verdict on gay marriage in June. In the statement, the RCA rejected the court’s “redefinition of marriage” and cited it as a threat to Orthodox religious freedom.
Rabbi Dratch said he was “embarrassed” that his appearance at the ceremony was considered something special. Standing behind a podium draped with a rainbow flag, he spoke for five minutes denouncing the cultural influences that produce violent extremists and pointing to elements of communal responsibility for the tragedy.
“There are sins of commission and sins of omission,” he said, citing failure to “speak up” against pejorative or mocking comments as part of the problem. “Our community has been much too silent for much too long.”
He added that while the act of extreme violence might have been an aberration, it “festered in a community whose culture is too often pervaded by insensitivity, disrespect, vulgarity and intolerance.”
One attendee, who preferred to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, said it “blew her mind” that Rabbi Dratch was standing behind a rainbow flag.
Mordechai Levovitz, executive director of JQY and one of the event’s organizers, said that Rabbi Dratch’s remarks “more than rose to the occasion.” While he had spoken alongside Rabbi Dratch at a mental health conference in April, this was the first time he was officially representing the RCA, according to Levovitz.
“In the past, he was careful to say he was coming as an individual, and not necessarily to represent the organizations,” said Levovitz. “This time, we didn’t give organizations that option.”
A representative from the Orthodox Union and Yeshiva University president Richard Joel both said they would have liked to attend, but were traveling, according to Levovitz.
“There can be positive repercussions from this tragedy — the Orthodox world is beginning to understand the impact of negative messaging coming from the rabbinate,” he said. “It’s just not so simple to keep pushing away an already ostracized minority.”
Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist who has written extensively on gender and LGBT issues, said that those with severe mental illnesses do make use of the belief systems around them. “Racism, sexism and homophobia are all themes they could pick up on,” he said. Repeated moral condemnations can lead to anti-homosexual biases, heterosexism, and even anti-gay violence. “It becomes increasingly difficult for members of these groups to distinguish between the ‘sinner’ and the ‘sin’,” he said.
The attack at the Jerusalem parade has alerted people to the “unintended consequences” of hateful words and actions. He referred to the memorial service as an “amazing moment of dialogue.”
“What we saw on Thursday did not spring up overnight — it is the culmination of brave efforts to engage in dialogue for the past 10 years,” he said.
In Israel, several prominent Orthodox rabbis, including Jerusalem’s Chief Rabbi Aryeh Stern and Rabbi Benny Lau, strongly condemned the violence and pointed to the communal factors that may have contributed.
“It is not possible to say ‘our hands did not spill this blood,’” said Rabbi Lau, standing in Zion Square before hundreds of rainbow flags at a memorial rally for Banki and the Palestinian toddler killed in the West Bank. “Anyone who has been at a Sabbath table, or in a classroom, or in a synagogue, or at a soccer pitch, or in a club, or at a community center, and heard the racist jokes, the homophobic jokes, the obscene words, and didn’t stand up and stop it, he is a partner to this bloodshed.”
Miriam Wopenoff, a middle-aged chasidic woman from Crown Heights, stood in the crowd on Thursday night, a wad of tissues in her hand. She wore a long black skirt and a traditional black head covering. “I’m here to support friends from my community,” she said. “Many of them couldn’t be here.”
Zach B., who asked that we not use his full name for privacy reasons, just graduated high school and will be studying at a prominent Orthodox yeshiva in Israel in the fall. He attended the memorial service on Thursday night not knowing what to expect. Still, the weight of communal responsibility propelled him to go.
“It would be easier if we could just say ‘this guy was a nut job’ and be done with it,” he said, wearing a kipa, dark pants and button down shirt. “But we can’t wash our hands of what happened, until we try and make it better.”
Editorial intern Talia Lakritz contributed to this report.
New Pressure On Poland For Property Restitution
N.Y. pols part of ‘sustained effort’ to bring issue to the fore.
STEWART AIN
STAFF WRITER
City Comptroller Scott Stringer, left, and State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. Getty Images
Lea Evron, a Holocaust survivor from Whitestone, Queens, has fought for years to win back title to the apartment building in Zywiec, Poland, her parents lost in the Holocaust. She finally won back the title in court, but the Polish government appealed.
After both an appeals court and the country’s supreme court rejected the appeals, a man who claims he owns the building filed his own appeal. He lost, but is appealing yet again.
“I don’t believe we’ll live to get anything — but maybe our grandchildren will,” said Evron’s husband, Jehuda.
Although 3 million Polish Jews were murdered in the Holocaust —more than from any other country — Poland remains the only country in the European Union that hasn’t passed a restitution law requiring private property confiscated by the Nazis or later nationalized by the Communists to be returned to the family or for the family to be compensated for it.
But in recent weeks there have been several significant developments that may increase pressure on the Polish government to finally deal with the issue.
Just last week, outgoing Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski — who in 2011 had called the lack of a restitution bill “a disgrace for Poland” — refused to sign into law a bill that would have severely restricted survivors and their heirs from reclaiming property in Warsaw that had been seized by the Nazis and then confiscated by the Communists that ruled Poland until 1989.
Ronald Lauder, chairman of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, noted that Komorowski referred the bill to the country’s Constitutional Tribunal to see whether the legislation would violate the constitution.
Gideon Taylor, the WJRO’s chief of operations, said, “For us the issue is not whether the legislation is constitutional or not but rather the fact that it is unjust.”
Passed by parliament June 25, it would have set a six-month deadline for rightful owners or their heirs to participate in administrative proceedings for property claims filed by December 1988.
Taylor pointed out that survivors and their heirs might today not even know such claims had been filed decades ago, and that this legislation would prevent them from pursuing their claim if they did not act within six months. In addition, it would end the practice of appointing a trustee to represent an heir who has not been identified. And it would have also denied owners the right to seek the return of large categories of property, including those in public use.
“The reality is that most people can’t recover their property because in order to succeed in court it is necessary to prove that the confiscation of their property by Poland’s former Communist government was incorrectly carried out because of a technical error,” Taylor noted.
More pressure on Poland came two weeks ago when the heads of three of the largest government pension funds in the United States called upon Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz to fulfill the country’s “obligation” to the survivors and heirs whose property was confiscated by the Nazis.
The three officials are New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and California State Treasurer John Chiang. Together, Stringer and DiNapoli manage pension funds totaling $340 billion.
The letter, dated July 30, is the “first step,” Stringer told The Jewish Week, pointing out that one of his predecessors, Alan Hevesi, used his position to leverage concessions on restitution claims from Switzerland in the 1990s. Hevesi threatened to move New York funds from Swiss banks and to withhold licenses the banks would need to operate in the state.
Their letter comes nearly a month after a bipartisan group of 42 members of Congress wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry to urge that the State Department continue its efforts to ensure the restitution of Jewish communal, private and heirless property seized by the Nazis throughout Europe.
The lawmakers wrote that many survivors in the U.S. “and around the world live in poverty knowing the property that was stolen from them and their families remains in the hands of governments and private owners who have no rightful claim.”
Among those signing the letter were New York Democratic Reps. Steve Israel, Jerrold Nadler, Nita Lowey, Joseph Crowley, Grace Meng, Kathleen Rice, Carolyn Maloney, Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano. Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin also signed.
Stringer told The Jewish Week that approximately 60,000 Holocaust survivors live in the New York area and that about half of them live at or below the poverty level.
All of these actions are part of what Taylor called a “new sustained effort to hopefully get this issue back on the national and international agenda.” He said it is “hard to estimate how many people would be eligible” to apply for property restitution, but that “most of the claimants would not be Jewish.”
Poland has long claimed it doesn’t have the financial means to make property restitution payments. In fact, Taylor cited a newspaper interview published in February by the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in which Irena Lipowicz, Poland’s ombudsman for civil rights protection, quoted the Finance Ministry as estimating in 2012 that a uniform property restitution law “could cause a sudden increase in the public debt of 18 billion zlotys [more than $4 billion].”
But because the issue has not been dealt with, she said a “property restitution industry” has developed in which property owners cede their claims to profiteers who give them pennies on the dollar and then seek compensation from the government.
Restitution payments were meant as “a remedy for historical injustices,” Lipowicz said, “What kind of injustice is being redressed here?”
She noted that it is “usually the elderly” who are not wealthy enough for court battles who “become easy victims for potential ‘claim hunters,’ even targets of intimidation and coercion. … If we initiated property restitution, for example by enacting the bill that was once vetoed by President [Aleksander] Kwasniewski, of course probably with certain modifications, we could give everyone compensation, perhaps even in the amount of 20 percent of the value of the assets that were lost — if we cannot afford more. It is important for this to happen quickly, and above all, for everyone to be entitled to it, rather than for instance having 5 percent of former owners and their inheritors recovering 100 percent but the rest nothing.”
Although the 20 percent offer might “outrage certain former owners,” Lipowicz was quoted as saying it “is a way out of the stalemate.”
“And for very elderly owners, that 20 percent could represent a huge amount, greater than what is being proposed by the ‘claim hunters,’” she added. “It seems more fair than the situation today. … I have also made an impassioned appeal for parliament to reinitiate legislative work as it concerns property restitution … The time is now [while] ... we still have EU funding.”
Taylor said several governments — including Australia, the Great Britain and Canada — are now lending their support for private property restitution not only in Poland but also in other countries in Central and Eastern Europe that have such laws in whole or in part but are slow in processing claims.
A property restitution program in Poland would undoubtedly be more difficult than in any other country because its 3.3 million Jewish residents represented 10 percent of the population when Nazi Germany invaded on Sept. 1, 1939, according to Michael Berenbaum, former director of the Holocaust Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
“Imagine what a Herculean job it would be if they said they would return all the Jewish property,” he said. “That’s one reason they have been avoiding it.”
Taylor noted that Jews in Poland “lived in urban areas and so clearly they had a lot of property. Living in villages and towns they owned lots of buildings, factories and houses.”
Asked about the financial drain on Poland to make such private property restitution payments, Taylor said his organization has suggested ways to finance it through “issuing bonds and through paying it over a few years — creative solutions could be found to restitute property.”
“It is complicated process,” he added, “but it must be done.”
stewart@jewishweek.org
We also look at the strange silence surrounding Hillel President Eric Fingerhut's about-face decision to address J Street U. And in the arts, we profile a fascinating young blues guitarist - "Blind Boy" Paxton - who happens to wear a yarmulke and cook some mean Jewish soul food.National
Shhhh! Fingerhut’s Speaking At J Street
HANNAH DREYFUS
About face: Hillel’s Eric Fingerhut will speak at a J Street U conference next week. JTA
President of Hillel Eric Fingerhut’s decision to speak at J Street U’s Student Leadership Institute next week has everybody talking — just not to the press.
The announcement, which Fingerhut shared personally in an email last week, comes after his decision to pull out of a commitment to speak at J Street’s annual conference in March made headlines.
Fingerhut reportedly canceled under pressure from Hillel donors who object to J Street, a self-described pro-Israel, pro-peace lobbying group that advocates greater U.S. engagement toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal and criticizes Israel’s settlement policies.
This time around, he will address 120 national J Street student leaders on Aug. 17 and “discuss issues of mutual concern,” according to a statement put out by J Street.
Still, despite what many are hoping to be a fresh start, Fingerhut could not be reached for comment. Matthew Berger, a spokesman for Hillel, disseminated a brief statement expressing Fingerhut’s excitement to engage with student leaders. “Eric appreciates the invitation from J Street U and looks forward to meeting the students and engaging with them,” it said.
Mum’s the word from J Street as well. The group’s representatives and campus leaders have declined to comment, referring instead to a bland statement welcoming Fingerhut.
One senior Jewish communal official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the charged politics, said Fingerhut’s decision to speak is a “very good thing.”
“There’s a growing acknowledgement that students who are joining J Street U on campus are exactly the types of students we need to engage — progressive, invested, and passionate about Israel,” the official said.
J Street U student leaders are often the best advocates against the growing BDS movement, the official added. J Street officially opposes boycotting and divesting from Israeli products, while other left-wing organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace, strongly advocate for BDS on campus.
“Hillel can’t put out talking points about BDS that are essentially the same at J Street’s and at the same time not embrace these students,” the official said.
And, going forward, Hillel may not be able to ignore J Street U’s growing numbers. The group currently has a presence on 85 campuses across the country, and 1,100 students attended the organization’s last conference in March. Though these numbers are still dwarfed by Hillel’s (550 campuses, over 1,000 trained student and faculty staff) J Street U is quickly growing.
With the burgeoning BDS movement on college campuses, recognizing similarities between the two organizations may be more important than ever, some suggest.
“I’m glad that Eric seized the opportunity to meet with these students who, in addition to their involvement with J Street, are involved in many aspects of Jewish life on campus,” said Brian Cohen, the executive director of the Columbia/Barnard Hillel Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life. “He’s demonstrating Hillel’s commitment to working with students from diverse backgrounds and with diverse views.”
Said the community official: “Students shouldn’t be punished because of conspiracy theories against J Street. Halevi [if only] we should have the problem of too many Israel advocates.”
editor@jewishweek.orgMusic
The Bluesman With The Yarmulke
‘Blind Boy’ Paxton may be the only blues singer who dons a skullcap and cooks ‘kosher soul food.’ Oh, and he can play, too.
LEHMAN WEICHSELBAUM
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH WEEK
Old soul: Jerron Paxton is a rising blues star who honors his Jewish roots. Bill Steber
‘Blind Boy” Jerron Paxton is taking a call inside his Ridgewood, Queens, kitchen to answer a few questions. He talks while making rugelach, from scratch. “I make everything from scratch,” he says.
When not home baking, Paxton is likely to be the only black blues performer wearing a yarmulke you’ll see this year. Or any year.
And that’s just for starters.
Even inside a genre that emphasizes the solo artist, with the musical distinctiveness and force of personality that goes with the role, the 26-year-old Paxton stands out vividly. Unlike other musicians content to rearrange the occasional old standard, Paxton tirelessly plumbs buried collections in search of forgotten but noteworthy song material, not only from blues but from jazz, folk, country and pop music, and returns it to the world’s ear in his performances. In a milieu where the electric guitar has long ruled as virtually the sole accompanying instrument, Paxton hues resolutely to its classic acoustic forerunner, along with the banjo, piano, fiddle, harmonica, Cajun accordion and percussive “bones,” each of which he plays with practiced skill.
Paxton will play his second solo concert at B.B. King’s on Aug. 21. His CD, “Jerrod Paxton: Recorded Music for Your Entertainment,” is making steady rounds. He has played the folk festivals at Newport, Live Oak (Santa Barbara, Calif.) Calgary and Merlefest (celebrating the music of Doc and Merle Watson), as well as others across the continent and overseas. He’s now finishing a summer tenure as artistic director of the Port Townsend Festival in Washington State.
And then there’s that yarmulke.
“I come from an old family of Cajun Jews,” he explains. “They were Francophone and Sephardic.”
While he was born in Los Angeles, his maternal family roots hark back many generations inside Louisiana. He suspects that his clan’s origins may trace back to crypto-Jews from medieval Spain, but says, “The trail stops with my great grandfather. It’s complicated.”
He does say that he’s the only member of his family that he knows of who practices the rites of his Jewish heritage. “We were the only house in South Central [L.A.] with a mezuzah, as far as I know,” he adds. A small, devoted following of young religious Jews shows up at his shows.
The yarmulke, a broad, black affair seen conspicuously on the cover portrait of his CD, is a standard accoutrement at concerts, though not at his most recent gig at B.B. King’s (“too hot,” he says). He picks up bookings for Friday nights, calling himself “sporadically shomer Shabbos.” At the same time, while less than strict on dietary habits on the performance trail, describing himself as “kosher-ish,” he keeps kosher at home.
Paxton especially enjoys hosting dinners with his brand of “kosher soul food,” which features but is not limited to his homemade pastries. “My friends are my biggest connection,” he says.
A habitual late riser given his performing schedule, he attends afternoon services at Congregation Beth Aaron when at home in Ridgewood.
“I’m not as shomer Shabbos as I would like,” he concedes. “At the same time I believe the Almighty has gifted me with certain opportunities to pay the rent and to take care of my momma.”
His mother remains in Los Angeles. His father is “a very good drummer.” His parents have long been “happily separated.”
Paxton has toured Israel twice, including a visit earlier this year — “from Metula to Eilat” — to sold out shows.
For a young man in a hurry, Paxton knows how to take his time. He forages across the vast repository of historical music from the blues to virtually every category that fits the label of popular music. He pursues his research and takes the stage while dealing with longtime failing vision due to a faulty retina.
In June at B.B. King’s, New York’s premier blues showcase, Paxton, a black vest, suspenders and white shirt on his big frame, sat on a wooden chair surrounded by his various instruments and a rising number of empty bottles of Poland Spring water. The only electrification was a voice microphone and a lower mike for his guitar.
“Y’all know how to waltz? Anybody here old enough to remember how a train sounds?” he asked the audience, then proceeded to answer the questions on his harmonica, caroming from extended, arcing wails to bursting, staccato chords. Then, to the highly audible appreciation of the audience, he blew through a series of comparative riffs simulating the sounds of the Southern Mississippi versus the Sante Fe Railway whistles, the horn of a Model T Ford and “a little baby in the back seat who won’t hush up.”
Paxton kept his grooves fluid and deft, never straining for mere virtuosity. His playlist ranged from familiar standards like “”The Cat Came Back,” “Rye Whiskey,” “O Louisiana” (a variation on “O Susanna”), “Get Along Children” and Don Ho’s “Little Grass Shack” to more obscure but worthy titles such as “When the Cornpone’s Hot,” “Call Them Possum” and “My Lorena,” a Southern slave romance.
After the show Paxton mingled with fans for souvenir snapshots and inspection of his instruments, as well as selling signed CDs.
In his tart but candid account of his personal history, Paxton is far from reticent about his varied origins, but he declares: “I keep my music and my religion separate.” Asked about the state of mind that makes the sound of the music, he declines to probe too deeply for a common ground between the blues that blacks feel and the blues that Jews feel. “Everybody suffers,” he says. In the end, he lets his ears do the thinking. He mentions a recent hearing of a cut of Slovak music with a striking violin part. “That motherf---er has the blues,” he says.
He cites “Ashkenazic” music and its signature “crying clarinet.” “It’s tough, it’s bad, it’s horrible,” he says. “It releases you.
“It weeps and it’s happy in the same instant. There’s the mournful intro, and then the party kicks off.”
Otherwise, he says, “The blues are the soundtrack to black culture.” An apt illustration of Paxton’s aversion to fixing a “blues” label beyond that boundary was his choice of the song “One of These Days” at the B.B. King show. It’s the signature number of the celebrated and, to many ears, decidedly “bluesy” American-Jewish performer Sophie Tucker. Less well known is its authorship, that of black Canadian composer Shelton Brooks.
After leaving California for a stop at Marist College in upstate New York, Paxton enrolled in, then dropped out of Manhattan’s New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, while immersing himself in the city’s live music scene. The Jalopy bar in Red Hook, Brooklyn became a favorite haunt. His popularity and concert deals neatly followed. He was recently featured in a cover story by the Village Voice.
At the show’s break, B.B. King sound man John Yorke commented, “Blind Boy was born in what, 1989? And there has never been anybody more authentic in contemporary blues.”
Yorke added that Paxton was leading a “new vanguard” in a burgeoning movement of such authentic blues. As an example he cited the up-and-coming 20-year-old performer Solomon Hicks.
“He’s the real deal,” says David Burger, the composer of Jewish choral music who worked closely with both Richie Havens and Shlomo Carlebach. “He’s a great instrumentalist, knows the real blues and plays them with heart. He’s like what you might have heard from the great bluesmen of the ’20s and ’30s, without the scratchy sound of overplayed 78s. I don’t hear any specific Jewish influence on his music, per se. But he sings the blues, which has roughly the same connotation as tzuris.”
“The biggest folly in American culture today is how everything gets reduced to technical terms,” says Paxton. “But music, real music, is spiritual. Folk music means music that stands against academia. It’s music by and for the people.”
Talking time is over. The rugelach won’t bake themselves. “Shavua tov [good week],” Paxton signs off.
Blind Boy Paxton performs Aug. 21, 7:30 p.m., at B.B. King’s (Lucille’s Grill), 237 W. 42nd St., (212) 997-4144, bbkingblues.com.The Editors
P.S. Our website is always available to you. Check it out for breaking news and exclusive videos, blogs, opinion essays, advice columns, and more.
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Gary Rosenblatt
Iran Deal Driving Jews Farther Apart
As Israel and U.S. interests diverge, so too do the ties that bind Jewish community together.
GARY ROSENBLATT
EDITOR AND PUBLISHER
Gary Rosenblatt
One of the lessons learned from the intense debate over the Iran nuclear deal is that there is a serious and growing divide within American Jewry. In large part it’s between those who are active in Jewish and Israeli life, and those who are not. This gap is increasingly evident in our widely divergent views on Israel, U.S. foreign policy, and the merits of the agreement with Tehran.
Indeed, members of each group find it hard to believe that fellow religionists can actually see things any other way than the way they do, and they often base their deeply divergent views on “Jewish values.”
The activists are strongly opposed to the deal as posing a mortal danger to Israel and a long-term threat to the U.S. How, they wonder, can large numbers — and perhaps a majority — of their fellow Jews support the deal? They also can’t imagine why the large majority of American Jews voted for and continue to support President Obama, especially when it comes to his Mideast policies and treatment of Israel, which they consider a disaster, intentional or not.
I define “activists” here as involved members of synagogues and Jewish organizations, and/or those who visit Israel on a regular basis, attend Jewish lectures and other programs in the community, follow Israel news closely in the media, choose political candidates in large part based on their position on Israel, etc.
You get the picture. I am generalizing here but these people as a rule tend to be more politically conservative and religiously observant and are more hawkish on Israel. And they are generally older. A large majority of the Orthodox community fits this description, with many of its members visiting Israel frequently and having relatives or close friends living in Israel (including West Bank communities). Within American Orthodoxy there is little debate about Jerusalem’s settlement policies or, for that matter, about the belief that President Obama is no friend of Israel. (The bigger discussion may be over whether or not he is a Muslim.)
We don’t need more polls to tell us that the activists are far more opposed to the nuclear deal than other Jews, though they are smaller in number. (How curious that most of the poll results tend to show American Jewish views in sync with those of whichever group sponsored the survey.)
And for those of us living in the metropolitan New York area, a center of national Jewish organizational life, and home to such a large Orthodox community, we sometimes forget we are living in a big Jewish bubble — the exception to, rather than the rule of, American Jewish attitudes.
According to the Pew study of American Jews, more than 90 percent are proud to be Jewish. The great majority are liberal in their politics and religious practices, they support and feel an affinity for Israel, and trace their moral and ethical values to Judaism. In choosing a political candidate, studies show that their primary interest is party affiliation. According to the Pew survey, 70 percent identify themselves as Democrats (compared to 49 percent of the overall American public; 22 percent of Jews lean Republican). Forty-nine percent of Jews say they are liberals (compared to 22 percent of the total population). These Jews say they are motivated by justice, equality and opposition to minority discrimination, which they often ascribe to Jewish values. Seventy-three percent of American Jews say remembering the Holocaust is essential to their Jewishness, while only 43 percent say that caring about Israel is essential to their Jewishness.
“Perhaps most telling is that most Jews don’t feel the United States needs to be closer to Israel,” noted an article in The Guardian in 2013, when the Pew report was issued. “Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of Jewish Americans feel that U.S. support for Israel is either ‘about right’ or too much. This holds across all age groups, and it matches attitudes in the population at large.”
What the Iran debate seems to be illuminating is that on this crucial issue, the strategic interests of America and Israel are diverging, perhaps more starkly than at any time in recent memory. And the fault lines in the Jewish community reflect that split.
It’s hard to say how much has changed in the two years since the Pew study came out. But it’s worth noting that during that time the relationship between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has become openly contentious and increasingly worrisome to those who recognize the supreme importance of strong U.S.-Israel ties.
Some blame the president, some blame the prime minister, and there is significant evidence to support critics on both sides. We are in a bad time. We have reached a low point in U.S.-Israel relations when the administration is suggesting that Jewish groups and Israeli officials, by lobbying against the Iran deal, may be to blame if the Iran deal falls apart and leads to another Mideast war. And the Israeli prime minister is so aligned with the Republicans in Congress that he feels he can’t back down now, even though bipartisan support has been the bedrock of Israeli foreign policy for decades, and the pressure to repair the relationship with the White House has never been greater.
For now the debate goes on and gets more personal, nastier, uglier. We long for it to be over, one way or another, and to begin the vital effort of healing the wounds and mending Washington-Jerusalem ties.
Let’s start closer to home, though. Even within our own community we need to recognize and address the divide that separates us, one from the other. It has become increasingly difficult to talk about collective “American Jewish attitudes” and shared “Jewish values” when there are such deep differences, not only in our outward views but also in how we define ourselves as Jews.
These issues tend to arise during moments of crisis, and then subside.
But they’re not going away. Dealing with them now may be our last chance before we reach the point where we no longer fit the definition of one Jewish people.
Gary@jewishweek.org.
Read More
MUSINGSRabbi David Wolpe
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH WEEK
Traveling ManWhen I travel I try very hard to imagine my life in the next few days so that I know how to pack. I actually give more imaginative forethought to travel than I do to days when I’m at home. At home there is everything I need, and I don’t have to anticipate contingencies.
Yet in travel there is also an element of faith. If you pack lightly, you believe that one way or another, few things will be adequate to the occasion. You will get it wrong, to be sure, but probably not as often as the over-packer who finds that he lugs much and uses little.
There is a story told of the Chofetz Chaim, the great 19th-century sage. Once a group of tourists from America made its way to the small Polish city of Radun to pay homage to the renown rabbi. There the travelers found him in a small study, with a few books, a chair and a desk. “Where is all your stuff?” asked one of the visitors. The Chofetz Chaim answered, “Where is all of yours?” The man said, “But — we are just passing through.”
The Chofetz Chaim smiled. “Me too.”
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book, “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press), has recently been published.Read More
Gamboling in Devin: Bulgarian city, in the Rhodope mountain range, is the popular site for Israeli poker players in search of recreation. Hilary Danailova
TRAVEL
Bulgaria's In The Cards
Hilary Danailova
Travel WriterAn Israeli relative by marriage is an enormous fan of casinos. This is a bit of problem back in Tel Aviv, where gambling is severely restricted by Israeli law.
So he does what a lot of other Israeli poker players do: He heads to Bulgaria.
Casinos are common across Europe — but the combination of proximity, a historic Jewish community, cultural affinity and (not least) dirt-cheap prices has made Bulgaria a destination for card-crazy Israelis. That’s how Oggi and I were tipped off to the resort town of Devin, picturesquely situated deep in the Rhodope Mountains near Greece, where casinos and spas offer a cool green retreat.
Before it was popular with Israelis on holiday, Devin was famous for its bubbling mineral springs; one of Bulgaria’s ubiquitous bottled waters bears the Devin logo. Any doubts about that water’s purity would be dispelled by the drive to Devin, which — no matter which route you take, and there aren’t a lot of choices — winds through one of the most remote and isolated corners of Europe.
The Rhodopes are a region of thick green forests and tiny, rustic mountain villages. They are also, as I discovered on a recent excursion, the only place in Bulgaria where I consistently confronted holes in the ground floor in place of real toilets.
Throughout Southern Europe (especially Italy), you still occasionally stumble upon these relics at out-of-the-way bar-cafés and gas stations. But in Bulgaria — with its mostly modern infrastructure and some of the nicest plumbing on the Continent — I was unpleasantly surprised. It’s worth noting that many of these squat-holes were hidden behind lavishly carved wooden doors in new buildings.
That brings us to the paradox of the Balkans: Though the region remains poor, a flood of post-Communist investment has resulted in myriad upscale, Western-inspired resorts. But just as you might enjoy a classy hotel for $30 a night or a memorable $10 restaurant meal, you might also find yourself cursing at some unpleasant or frustrating anachronism — such as hole-in-the-ground toilets or, worse, a bathroom attendant demanding money in exchange for toilet paper.
Our room at the Devin Hotel and Spa was nice enough, if overpriced at $40. But it was on the top floor of the tallest building in a mountain town, and the view over the cityscape was priceless. And the high-altitude air was a good 20 degrees cooler than that of the valleys — a boon to heat-weary Mediterraneans.
Devin itself feels ramshackle and lost in time, though its charms would improve considerably if I were a gambler — and I ran into a few, chattering in Hebrew, in the lobby. It’s hard to beat single-digit prices for massage and spa services, though, and the tomato-and-feta salads in the hotel restaurant would make any Israeli feel right at home.
Non-gamblers of any persuasion might prefer, as I did, the adorable village of Shiroka Laka, where 19th-century buildings cling to the narrows of a gorge about 45 minutes down the road.
And what a road it is. Driving south from the Thracian Plain into the Rhodopes, we left behind sunflower fields to climb into a spruce-laced Alpine tundra. The road was muddy with the meltage of late-spring snow; we saw a fox, herds of deer and dozens of icy, frozen lakes. Between Devin and Shiroka Laka, we descended into tentative greenery as the road wound along that deep river gorge, punctuated by hydroelectric dams.
Shiroka Laka, a proclaimed architectural landmark, is known for its musical folklore institute — and the town takes its role in preserving rural Balkan culture extremely seriously. There isn’t a lot to do here, but it’s an extremely pretty place to while away a day.
You wander through the local ethnographic museum; shop for hand-painted pottery and embroidered linens in festive red, white and green; snap pictures of the wood-beam houses; and tuck into cafés hung with bear skins and bagpipes. If you’re lucky, there might be a performance of the live music for which this village — and region — are famous. Agonizingly slow, mournful and curiously chromatic in an Oriental vein, the melodies feature singers accompanied by gaida, the local bagpipe.
Heading back north, we stopped in the ski resort of Chepelare, where the off-season slopes were green and quiet. I heard British-accented English, German and Hebrew on the central promenade, testament to the town’s popularity for foreign second-home buyers on a budget: along the river on the outskirts of town, new multistory complexes were rising alongside casinos. But as the temperature soared toward summer, I saw more donkey carts than skiers (or casino-goers, for that matter).
Whether you’ll like this region is itself a gamble. The Rhodopes are certainly beautiful, the mountain scenery as untouched as anywhere in Europe, and you can’t argue with the water — or the prices. If modern comforts are your thing, though, you may want to head to Monte Carlo.
editor@jewishweek.orgRead More
Art Kibbutz offers lush oasis to New York's remaining few, true bohemians
Traveling ManWhen I travel I try very hard to imagine my life in the next few days so that I know how to pack. I actually give more imaginative forethought to travel than I do to days when I’m at home. At home there is everything I need, and I don’t have to anticipate contingencies.
Yet in travel there is also an element of faith. If you pack lightly, you believe that one way or another, few things will be adequate to the occasion. You will get it wrong, to be sure, but probably not as often as the over-packer who finds that he lugs much and uses little.
There is a story told of the Chofetz Chaim, the great 19th-century sage. Once a group of tourists from America made its way to the small Polish city of Radun to pay homage to the renown rabbi. There the travelers found him in a small study, with a few books, a chair and a desk. “Where is all your stuff?” asked one of the visitors. The Chofetz Chaim answered, “Where is all of yours?” The man said, “But — we are just passing through.”
The Chofetz Chaim smiled. “Me too.”
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book, “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press), has recently been published.Read More
Gamboling in Devin: Bulgarian city, in the Rhodope mountain range, is the popular site for Israeli poker players in search of recreation. Hilary Danailova
TRAVEL
Bulgaria's In The Cards
Hilary Danailova
Travel WriterAn Israeli relative by marriage is an enormous fan of casinos. This is a bit of problem back in Tel Aviv, where gambling is severely restricted by Israeli law.
So he does what a lot of other Israeli poker players do: He heads to Bulgaria.
Casinos are common across Europe — but the combination of proximity, a historic Jewish community, cultural affinity and (not least) dirt-cheap prices has made Bulgaria a destination for card-crazy Israelis. That’s how Oggi and I were tipped off to the resort town of Devin, picturesquely situated deep in the Rhodope Mountains near Greece, where casinos and spas offer a cool green retreat.
Before it was popular with Israelis on holiday, Devin was famous for its bubbling mineral springs; one of Bulgaria’s ubiquitous bottled waters bears the Devin logo. Any doubts about that water’s purity would be dispelled by the drive to Devin, which — no matter which route you take, and there aren’t a lot of choices — winds through one of the most remote and isolated corners of Europe.
The Rhodopes are a region of thick green forests and tiny, rustic mountain villages. They are also, as I discovered on a recent excursion, the only place in Bulgaria where I consistently confronted holes in the ground floor in place of real toilets.
Throughout Southern Europe (especially Italy), you still occasionally stumble upon these relics at out-of-the-way bar-cafés and gas stations. But in Bulgaria — with its mostly modern infrastructure and some of the nicest plumbing on the Continent — I was unpleasantly surprised. It’s worth noting that many of these squat-holes were hidden behind lavishly carved wooden doors in new buildings.
That brings us to the paradox of the Balkans: Though the region remains poor, a flood of post-Communist investment has resulted in myriad upscale, Western-inspired resorts. But just as you might enjoy a classy hotel for $30 a night or a memorable $10 restaurant meal, you might also find yourself cursing at some unpleasant or frustrating anachronism — such as hole-in-the-ground toilets or, worse, a bathroom attendant demanding money in exchange for toilet paper.
Our room at the Devin Hotel and Spa was nice enough, if overpriced at $40. But it was on the top floor of the tallest building in a mountain town, and the view over the cityscape was priceless. And the high-altitude air was a good 20 degrees cooler than that of the valleys — a boon to heat-weary Mediterraneans.
Devin itself feels ramshackle and lost in time, though its charms would improve considerably if I were a gambler — and I ran into a few, chattering in Hebrew, in the lobby. It’s hard to beat single-digit prices for massage and spa services, though, and the tomato-and-feta salads in the hotel restaurant would make any Israeli feel right at home.
Non-gamblers of any persuasion might prefer, as I did, the adorable village of Shiroka Laka, where 19th-century buildings cling to the narrows of a gorge about 45 minutes down the road.
And what a road it is. Driving south from the Thracian Plain into the Rhodopes, we left behind sunflower fields to climb into a spruce-laced Alpine tundra. The road was muddy with the meltage of late-spring snow; we saw a fox, herds of deer and dozens of icy, frozen lakes. Between Devin and Shiroka Laka, we descended into tentative greenery as the road wound along that deep river gorge, punctuated by hydroelectric dams.
Shiroka Laka, a proclaimed architectural landmark, is known for its musical folklore institute — and the town takes its role in preserving rural Balkan culture extremely seriously. There isn’t a lot to do here, but it’s an extremely pretty place to while away a day.
You wander through the local ethnographic museum; shop for hand-painted pottery and embroidered linens in festive red, white and green; snap pictures of the wood-beam houses; and tuck into cafés hung with bear skins and bagpipes. If you’re lucky, there might be a performance of the live music for which this village — and region — are famous. Agonizingly slow, mournful and curiously chromatic in an Oriental vein, the melodies feature singers accompanied by gaida, the local bagpipe.
Heading back north, we stopped in the ski resort of Chepelare, where the off-season slopes were green and quiet. I heard British-accented English, German and Hebrew on the central promenade, testament to the town’s popularity for foreign second-home buyers on a budget: along the river on the outskirts of town, new multistory complexes were rising alongside casinos. But as the temperature soared toward summer, I saw more donkey carts than skiers (or casino-goers, for that matter).
Whether you’ll like this region is itself a gamble. The Rhodopes are certainly beautiful, the mountain scenery as untouched as anywhere in Europe, and you can’t argue with the water — or the prices. If modern comforts are your thing, though, you may want to head to Monte Carlo.
editor@jewishweek.orgRead More
Art Kibbutz offers lush oasis to New York's remaining few, true bohemians
Featured on NYBLUEPRINT
Art Grows On Governors Island
Aimee Rubensteen
Contributing Writer
Art Grows On Governors Island
Aimee Rubensteen
Contributing Writer
Museums & Exhibitions
TOP STORIES:Israel News
For Jerusalem LGBTs, Hope Alongside The Fear
In wake of stabbings, gay community and city leaders struggling with ‘very complex relationship.’
MICHELE CHABIN
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Members of Jerusalem’s LGBT community and their supporters gathered in the city center Sunday night for a memorial vigi.
Jerusalem — A week after an ultra-Orthodox man stabbed six participants in Jerusalem’s July 30 Gay Pride march, Klil Halevy, a 17-year-old Jerusalemite, was still reeling from the tragedy.
“We saw everything,” said Halevy, who describes herself as “pan-sexual.” She and several high school friends attended a memorial vigil Sunday night in Zion Square for Shiri Banki, the 16-year-old teen stabbed to death by Yishai Schlissel, the same ultra-Orthodox man who stabbed participants in the 2005 Jerusalem Gay Pride march.
“We saw five of the six people who were stabbed,” at the bottom of Ben Yehuda Street, where police had set up metal barriers meant to provide a layer of security, Halevy said. “We saw Shira’s blood gushing. We saw two guys jump the killer. I froze.”
Halevy said she now fears being near men with beards — Schlissel, who was transferred to a psychiatric institution this week, is bearded — “which is pretty difficult since I work at the zoo which is filled with religious families with beards. Nice religious families, but I’m scared.”
The teen, who sports several piercings, said she’s “terrified” to show any affection to her girlfriend in public places. Nor does she feel safe enough to venture out into the streets of Jerusalem again dressed as a male, as she did, for the very first time, during the march.
Members of Jerusalem’s LGBT community say the stabbings drove home what they have always felt: that many of the city’s residents are hostile to them and their lifestyle. It’s what makes living a gay life in Jerusalem far different from living one in Tel Aviv, which is seen as far more tolerant towards the LGBT community.
A Hebrew-language video that’s been making the rounds on social media since the murder appears to bear this out.
In the video, the camera follows two man dressed in tank tops walking hand-in-hand through the most popular streets of downtown Jerusalem. Along the way dozens of people turn and stare, and several male onlookers shout “Homo” and curse at the couple.
The video is reminiscent of a French video that was viewed widely in which a journalist posing as a religious French Jew experiences anti-Semitism on the streets of France. The gay couple in Jerusalem experience much more verbal abuse than the Frenchman.
Since the stabbings, the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance has gone into overdrive to meet the needs of the city’s LGBT community, said Open House spokesman Tom Kening.
“What happened in Jerusalem hit a nerve and exposed a lot of the anger, pain and fear that was always there but which we had become a bit complacent about,” Kening said.
Looking back over the past decade “we realized not much has changed. There is still incitement, still delegitimization of our community. There’s a very mainstream — not just ultra-Orthodox — perception in Israeli society that there shouldn’t be an LGBT community in Jerusalem, and if there is one, we should keep our heads down and not be public about it. This feeling has seeped into society, and some suggestive people act on it.”
Kening said LGBT Jerusalemites have experienced a wide range of reactions to the attacks.
“There’s been a lot of communal mourning, spontaneous protests. There was a big rally at Zion Square Saturday night and a vigil there on Sunday.”
The Open House has become a focal point for community members trying to process what happened and organize a response. Since the attack, the grassroots community center has been open nearly around the clock to provide counseling and serve as a refuge.
The administrators decided to temporarily close the center’s HIV clinic to free up psychologists, social workers and volunteers to help community members, many of them teens, traumatized by the stabbings. They recruited additional volunteers, from mental health professionals to community activists, via Facebook.
“We’ve all been in crisis mode, working 20-hour days,” Kening acknowledged.
Kening said representatives of the Jerusalem Municipality reached out to the Open House immediately after the attack, but whether the municipality will heed requests from the LGBT community remains a question mark.
“The municipality promised to meet our needs and we’ve had some discussions” about how to make Jerusalem a more welcoming place for LGBTs, the spokesman said, declining to elaborate. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
The LGBT community has always had a “very complex relationship” with the municipality, he said.
“In recent years it has become more cooperative, but they have never really wanted us to participate in cultural events or other things the city organizes,” he said.
The municipality displayed “a lack of sensitivity” by holding a previously scheduled street party right under the windows of the Open House the day after the stabbings, he added.
“Our community center was full of traumatized kids who’d spent the night on our couches. Then [the municipality] posted a video online showing how Jerusalem was celebrating.”
While the LGBT community didn’t expect the city to stop functioning during the past week, it would have appreciated a reference to the attack on the municipality’s web page and on Facebook, Kening said.
Mayor Nir Barkat condemned the stabbings and said, “We will continue to support all groups and communities in Jerusalem and won’t be deterred by those who try perverse ways to prevent this. Clearly something went wrong here. The police will have to look into this deeply.”
The municipality’s spokesman’s office told The Jewish Week “the Jerusalem Municipality embraces the Open House at this difficult time” and has scheduled a meeting under the authority of the municipality’s head.
“The municipality provides financial support for the Open House each year, according to set and transparent criteria and activities, as it does for other groups which meet the criteria. The mayor’s door is always open for The Open House. There have been a number of meetings in the past and there will be more after he returns from abroad to give aid to the community as needed.”
Jerusalem’s LGBT community members hope some good will emerge from the tragedy.
One positive outcome has been the self-reflection expressed by some Orthodox Jews, including rabbis who visited hospitalized victims.
Last week about 30 young adults, some ultra-Orthodox Jews from Jerusalem, some members of the LGBT community, met in the city center to discuss the tragedy and get to know one another.
During the encounter, which was organized by the Gesher and Chavura Tziburit organizations, a teenage girl from the LGBT community told the group she is experiencing “lots of fear and anger, but I came to try to listen and let it go,” according to Eytan Morgenstern, Gesher’s communications officer.
“One of the young ultra-Orthodox men who came opened up by saying, ‘I don’t feel the need to apologize, I don’t feel that the murder represents me in any way. But just as in the Torah it says that when a murdered person is found between cities, the closest one must take responsibility — so, too, I came here,” Morgenstern said.
“We understand it takes time for attitudes to change, and we think this might be the catalyst,” Kening said, noting that the municipality is now considering whether to introduce an LGBT tolerance educational program adapted by religious LGBT activists.
“There are reasons to be optimistic,” he said.
Read More International
New Pressure On Poland For Property Restitution
N.Y. pols part of ‘sustained effort’ to bring issue to the fore.
STEWART AIN
STAFF WRITER
City Comptroller Scott Stringer, left, and State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. Getty Images
Lea Evron, a Holocaust survivor from Whitestone, Queens, has fought for years to win back title to the apartment building in Zywiec, Poland, her parents lost in the Holocaust. She finally won back the title in court, but the Polish government appealed.
After both an appeals court and the country’s supreme court rejected the appeals, a man who claims he owns the building filed his own appeal. He lost, but is appealing yet again.
“I don’t believe we’ll live to get anything — but maybe our grandchildren will,” said Evron’s husband, Jehuda.
Although 3 million Polish Jews were murdered in the Holocaust —more than from any other country — Poland remains the only country in the European Union that hasn’t passed a restitution law requiring private property confiscated by the Nazis or later nationalized by the Communists to be returned to the family or for the family to be compensated for it.
But in recent weeks there have been several significant developments that may increase pressure on the Polish government to finally deal with the issue.
Just last week, outgoing Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski — who in 2011 had called the lack of a restitution bill “a disgrace for Poland” — refused to sign into law a bill that would have severely restricted survivors and their heirs from reclaiming property in Warsaw that had been seized by the Nazis and then confiscated by the Communists that ruled Poland until 1989.
Ronald Lauder, chairman of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, noted that Komorowski referred the bill to the country’s Constitutional Tribunal to see whether the legislation would violate the constitution.
Gideon Taylor, the WJRO’s chief of operations, said, “For us the issue is not whether the legislation is constitutional or not but rather the fact that it is unjust.”
Passed by parliament June 25, it would have set a six-month deadline for rightful owners or their heirs to participate in administrative proceedings for property claims filed by December 1988.
Taylor pointed out that survivors and their heirs might today not even know such claims had been filed decades ago, and that this legislation would prevent them from pursuing their claim if they did not act within six months. In addition, it would end the practice of appointing a trustee to represent an heir who has not been identified. And it would have also denied owners the right to seek the return of large categories of property, including those in public use.
“The reality is that most people can’t recover their property because in order to succeed in court it is necessary to prove that the confiscation of their property by Poland’s former Communist government was incorrectly carried out because of a technical error,” Taylor noted.
More pressure on Poland came two weeks ago when the heads of three of the largest government pension funds in the United States called upon Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz to fulfill the country’s “obligation” to the survivors and heirs whose property was confiscated by the Nazis.
The three officials are New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and California State Treasurer John Chiang. Together, Stringer and DiNapoli manage pension funds totaling $340 billion.
The letter, dated July 30, is the “first step,” Stringer told The Jewish Week, pointing out that one of his predecessors, Alan Hevesi, used his position to leverage concessions on restitution claims from Switzerland in the 1990s. Hevesi threatened to move New York funds from Swiss banks and to withhold licenses the banks would need to operate in the state.
Their letter comes nearly a month after a bipartisan group of 42 members of Congress wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry to urge that the State Department continue its efforts to ensure the restitution of Jewish communal, private and heirless property seized by the Nazis throughout Europe.
The lawmakers wrote that many survivors in the U.S. “and around the world live in poverty knowing the property that was stolen from them and their families remains in the hands of governments and private owners who have no rightful claim.”
Among those signing the letter were New York Democratic Reps. Steve Israel, Jerrold Nadler, Nita Lowey, Joseph Crowley, Grace Meng, Kathleen Rice, Carolyn Maloney, Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano. Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin also signed.
Stringer told The Jewish Week that approximately 60,000 Holocaust survivors live in the New York area and that about half of them live at or below the poverty level.
All of these actions are part of what Taylor called a “new sustained effort to hopefully get this issue back on the national and international agenda.” He said it is “hard to estimate how many people would be eligible” to apply for property restitution, but that “most of the claimants would not be Jewish.”
Poland has long claimed it doesn’t have the financial means to make property restitution payments. In fact, Taylor cited a newspaper interview published in February by the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in which Irena Lipowicz, Poland’s ombudsman for civil rights protection, quoted the Finance Ministry as estimating in 2012 that a uniform property restitution law “could cause a sudden increase in the public debt of 18 billion zlotys [more than $4 billion].”
But because the issue has not been dealt with, she said a “property restitution industry” has developed in which property owners cede their claims to profiteers who give them pennies on the dollar and then seek compensation from the government.
Restitution payments were meant as “a remedy for historical injustices,” Lipowicz said, “What kind of injustice is being redressed here?”
She noted that it is “usually the elderly” who are not wealthy enough for court battles who “become easy victims for potential ‘claim hunters,’ even targets of intimidation and coercion. … If we initiated property restitution, for example by enacting the bill that was once vetoed by President [Aleksander] Kwasniewski, of course probably with certain modifications, we could give everyone compensation, perhaps even in the amount of 20 percent of the value of the assets that were lost — if we cannot afford more. It is important for this to happen quickly, and above all, for everyone to be entitled to it, rather than for instance having 5 percent of former owners and their inheritors recovering 100 percent but the rest nothing.”
Although the 20 percent offer might “outrage certain former owners,” Lipowicz was quoted as saying it “is a way out of the stalemate.”
“And for very elderly owners, that 20 percent could represent a huge amount, greater than what is being proposed by the ‘claim hunters,’” she added. “It seems more fair than the situation today. … I have also made an impassioned appeal for parliament to reinitiate legislative work as it concerns property restitution … The time is now [while] ... we still have EU funding.”
Taylor said several governments — including Australia, the Great Britain and Canada — are now lending their support for private property restitution not only in Poland but also in other countries in Central and Eastern Europe that have such laws in whole or in part but are slow in processing claims.
A property restitution program in Poland would undoubtedly be more difficult than in any other country because its 3.3 million Jewish residents represented 10 percent of the population when Nazi Germany invaded on Sept. 1, 1939, according to Michael Berenbaum, former director of the Holocaust Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
“Imagine what a Herculean job it would be if they said they would return all the Jewish property,” he said. “That’s one reason they have been avoiding it.”
Taylor noted that Jews in Poland “lived in urban areas and so clearly they had a lot of property. Living in villages and towns they owned lots of buildings, factories and houses.”
Asked about the financial drain on Poland to make such private property restitution payments, Taylor said his organization has suggested ways to finance it through “issuing bonds and through paying it over a few years — creative solutions could be found to restitute property.”
“It is complicated process,” he added, “but it must be done.”
stewart@jewishweek.org
Read More New York
At LGBT Memorial Service, Orthodox Add To The Rainbow
RCA’s Rabbi Mark Dratch points to communal responsibility, says not the time to ‘retreat’ into defensive mode.
HANNAH DREYFUS
STAFF WRITER
A memorial service for Shira Banki, the 16-year-old stabbed and killed at Jerusalem's Gay parade. Congregation Beit Simchat Tora
When Sean Herzfeld, an openly gay Orthodox teenager from Westchester County, heard about Shira Banki, the 16-year-old who was stabbed and killed by a charedi protestor at Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade, he felt scared.
“I was sad, I was disappointed, but mostly I was really frightened,” said the rising junior at a local yeshiva high school. “It could have been me, or any one of my ally friends.”
Herzfeld spoke last Thursday night to a crowd of 300 at a memorial and solidarity rally for Banki at the LGBT Community Center in Lower Manhattan. Though there were only 150 seats, people flowed into the auditorium and stood pressed closely together, many wiping away tears as Herzfeld spoke. The crowd was diverse, with kippot, traditional women’s head coverings and rainbow flags sprinkling the crowd.
Herzfeld, an active member of JQY, a nonprofit organization that supports Orthodox LGBT Jews, recalled marching with his peers in the Salute to Israel Parade just two months earlier, waving a rainbow flag.
“Three days after the Israeli Day parade, I’d already resumed my usual teenage schedule including participating in school activities, extracurriculars and hanging out with friends,” he said. “Three days after participating in the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade, Shira Banki succumbed to her wounds on her hospital bed.”
The emotional memorial service brought together representatives from organizations representing a wide swath of the Jewish community, including Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, senior rabbi at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the largest LGBT synagogue, Rabbi Steven Greenberg, co-director of Eshel, an organization working towards the integration of LGBT Jews, and Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), America’s largest body of Orthodox rabbis.
Rabbi Dratch’s appearance, which marked the first time an RCA member spoke at a LGBT Center event, was considered a “historic” moment by many, especially in light of the RCA’s public statement of concern following the Supreme Court verdict on gay marriage in June. In the statement, the RCA rejected the court’s “redefinition of marriage” and cited it as a threat to Orthodox religious freedom.
Rabbi Dratch said he was “embarrassed” that his appearance at the ceremony was considered something special. Standing behind a podium draped with a rainbow flag, he spoke for five minutes denouncing the cultural influences that produce violent extremists and pointing to elements of communal responsibility for the tragedy.
“There are sins of commission and sins of omission,” he said, citing failure to “speak up” against pejorative or mocking comments as part of the problem. “Our community has been much too silent for much too long.”
He added that while the act of extreme violence might have been an aberration, it “festered in a community whose culture is too often pervaded by insensitivity, disrespect, vulgarity and intolerance.”
One attendee, who preferred to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, said it “blew her mind” that Rabbi Dratch was standing behind a rainbow flag.
Mordechai Levovitz, executive director of JQY and one of the event’s organizers, said that Rabbi Dratch’s remarks “more than rose to the occasion.” While he had spoken alongside Rabbi Dratch at a mental health conference in April, this was the first time he was officially representing the RCA, according to Levovitz.
“In the past, he was careful to say he was coming as an individual, and not necessarily to represent the organizations,” said Levovitz. “This time, we didn’t give organizations that option.”
A representative from the Orthodox Union and Yeshiva University president Richard Joel both said they would have liked to attend, but were traveling, according to Levovitz.
“There can be positive repercussions from this tragedy — the Orthodox world is beginning to understand the impact of negative messaging coming from the rabbinate,” he said. “It’s just not so simple to keep pushing away an already ostracized minority.”
Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist who has written extensively on gender and LGBT issues, said that those with severe mental illnesses do make use of the belief systems around them. “Racism, sexism and homophobia are all themes they could pick up on,” he said. Repeated moral condemnations can lead to anti-homosexual biases, heterosexism, and even anti-gay violence. “It becomes increasingly difficult for members of these groups to distinguish between the ‘sinner’ and the ‘sin’,” he said.
The attack at the Jerusalem parade has alerted people to the “unintended consequences” of hateful words and actions. He referred to the memorial service as an “amazing moment of dialogue.”
“What we saw on Thursday did not spring up overnight — it is the culmination of brave efforts to engage in dialogue for the past 10 years,” he said.
In Israel, several prominent Orthodox rabbis, including Jerusalem’s Chief Rabbi Aryeh Stern and Rabbi Benny Lau, strongly condemned the violence and pointed to the communal factors that may have contributed.
“It is not possible to say ‘our hands did not spill this blood,’” said Rabbi Lau, standing in Zion Square before hundreds of rainbow flags at a memorial rally for Banki and the Palestinian toddler killed in the West Bank. “Anyone who has been at a Sabbath table, or in a classroom, or in a synagogue, or at a soccer pitch, or in a club, or at a community center, and heard the racist jokes, the homophobic jokes, the obscene words, and didn’t stand up and stop it, he is a partner to this bloodshed.”
Miriam Wopenoff, a middle-aged chasidic woman from Crown Heights, stood in the crowd on Thursday night, a wad of tissues in her hand. She wore a long black skirt and a traditional black head covering. “I’m here to support friends from my community,” she said. “Many of them couldn’t be here.”
Zach B., who asked that we not use his full name for privacy reasons, just graduated high school and will be studying at a prominent Orthodox yeshiva in Israel in the fall. He attended the memorial service on Thursday night not knowing what to expect. Still, the weight of communal responsibility propelled him to go.
“It would be easier if we could just say ‘this guy was a nut job’ and be done with it,” he said, wearing a kipa, dark pants and button down shirt. “But we can’t wash our hands of what happened, until we try and make it better.”
Editorial intern Talia Lakritz contributed to this report.
Read More National
Governors Island was originally supposed to be a vacation destination, boasting luxury resorts, fancy hotels and the bourgeois tourists such trimmings would attract. Thankfully, for whatever reason, that never happened.
Instead, the island became a locale brimming with contemporary art studios and the home for Art Kibbutz, an international Jewish artist residency that is continually nurturing the relationship between art and Judaism.
Founded in 2010 by Patricia Eszter Margit, Art Kibbutz is a self-described nurturing incubator that offers Jewish artists a multi-disciplinary retreat-style community. This year’s Summer Residency on Governors Island from May 26 – September 10, 2015 is the only Jewish art residency, among numerous other studios and galleries, on the island.
Art Kibbutz’s central theme this year is Shmita. Shmita, which literally translates in Hebrew as “release”, refers to the biblical tradition to release the land from harvest every seventh year of the agricultural cycle in Israel. Additionally, every debt is supposed to be relieved every seventh year. Embedded in social, religious and environmental concerns, the artists engage with the environment – most of the artists actually use dirt, branches and rocks as their primary medium.
The selected 60 artists and activists range from Chassidic Jews, non-observant Jews and not Jewish artists. The studio residency enables the participants to work both independently on their own craft as well as collaborate on projects together for four months throughout the summer. A quick ferry ride away from mainland New York City, Art Kibbutz is located in a former army officer’s mansion in Nolan Park, a great lawn along the island’s southeast edge.
On August 9, Art Kibbutz will feature an exhibition and festival titled, Shmita Art Fest. The day will be filled with art, family activities and Jewish learning, and it will be in no better location than tucked away on a lush summer island. Nature will take center stage featuring numerous artists from around the globe: Kobi Arad, Joan Beard, Ezra Bookman, Leah Caroline, Asherah Cinnamon and many other talents.
A private viewing of the residency provides a quiet space for observation. In the first room, there is a table with a mailbox and a stack of paper and envelopes. Elizabeth Savage’s project displays instructions on the wall prompting visitors to contemplate the theme of the residency this year, which is Shmita.
The visitor is invited to write a letter to herself about something – anything – that they are trying to release. A contemplative introduction contrasts the viewing experience in packed museums and buzzing galleries in Manhattan. Instead, Art Kibbutz focuses on slowing the public’s pace to notice the minute details of nature in each exhibited piece.
Even with the knowledge that the exhibit is addressing the relationship between Shmita and art, there is still an initial sense of surprise when viewing the branches trapped in a cage-like canvas hanging on the wall. Renata Stein’s The Quality of Mercy (2015) utilizes the many materials of nature to create a planter-like wall sculpture. A wooden box hangs on the wall filled with dirt, from which branches emerge like outstretched arms, and are filled scattered pieces of paper inscribed with Hebrew letters.
When a small moth unexpectedly flies through the room’s open window and flutters by the work and to nestle into the nest-like sculpture, it becomes readily apparent that the location for this year's themed residency could not be more fitting.
In the basement, Portuguese artist Filipe Cortez also uses his surroundings as his materials in Fossils. His site-specific installation transforms a dark and abandoned space into a full-fledged study of a building’s muscle memory. The artist collects piles of waste, mold and lead paint in the building, and then casts them in latex, which when removed, creates a skin. These skins are then draped and displayed from the ceiling in one room creating an altogether hauntingly beautiful tableau.
Instead of disposing the countless flakes of paint in another room in the basement, Cortez piles them up, displays them in front of a brick wall and spotlights them. Elevating what was once considered waste in an abandoned space, the artist cleverly shifts the perception and function of recycling.
Art Kibbutz relates Fossils to this year’s residency theme of Shmita by explaining that “The ‘fossils’ are distinct from that which they are records of; yet concurrently retain many of the original properties. They exist as residues of past lives, recalling the passage of time and process of decay.” A successful installation is one that transforms an old space into a new one but also acknowledge its past - Cortez does both.
The combination of artworks that harness the elements of the earth, but also utilize the urban environment, is an indication of the importance of the preservation of Governors Island itself. When rent is high and space is sparse in Manhattan and Brooklyn, Art Kibbutz promises its artists (and its visitors) a much-needed oasis.
Read More TOP STORIES:Israel News
For Jerusalem LGBTs, Hope Alongside The Fear
In wake of stabbings, gay community and city leaders struggling with ‘very complex relationship.’
MICHELE CHABIN
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Members of Jerusalem’s LGBT community and their supporters gathered in the city center Sunday night for a memorial vigi.
Jerusalem — A week after an ultra-Orthodox man stabbed six participants in Jerusalem’s July 30 Gay Pride march, Klil Halevy, a 17-year-old Jerusalemite, was still reeling from the tragedy.
“We saw everything,” said Halevy, who describes herself as “pan-sexual.” She and several high school friends attended a memorial vigil Sunday night in Zion Square for Shiri Banki, the 16-year-old teen stabbed to death by Yishai Schlissel, the same ultra-Orthodox man who stabbed participants in the 2005 Jerusalem Gay Pride march.
“We saw five of the six people who were stabbed,” at the bottom of Ben Yehuda Street, where police had set up metal barriers meant to provide a layer of security, Halevy said. “We saw Shira’s blood gushing. We saw two guys jump the killer. I froze.”
Halevy said she now fears being near men with beards — Schlissel, who was transferred to a psychiatric institution this week, is bearded — “which is pretty difficult since I work at the zoo which is filled with religious families with beards. Nice religious families, but I’m scared.”
The teen, who sports several piercings, said she’s “terrified” to show any affection to her girlfriend in public places. Nor does she feel safe enough to venture out into the streets of Jerusalem again dressed as a male, as she did, for the very first time, during the march.
Members of Jerusalem’s LGBT community say the stabbings drove home what they have always felt: that many of the city’s residents are hostile to them and their lifestyle. It’s what makes living a gay life in Jerusalem far different from living one in Tel Aviv, which is seen as far more tolerant towards the LGBT community.
A Hebrew-language video that’s been making the rounds on social media since the murder appears to bear this out.
In the video, the camera follows two man dressed in tank tops walking hand-in-hand through the most popular streets of downtown Jerusalem. Along the way dozens of people turn and stare, and several male onlookers shout “Homo” and curse at the couple.
The video is reminiscent of a French video that was viewed widely in which a journalist posing as a religious French Jew experiences anti-Semitism on the streets of France. The gay couple in Jerusalem experience much more verbal abuse than the Frenchman.
Since the stabbings, the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance has gone into overdrive to meet the needs of the city’s LGBT community, said Open House spokesman Tom Kening.
“What happened in Jerusalem hit a nerve and exposed a lot of the anger, pain and fear that was always there but which we had become a bit complacent about,” Kening said.
Looking back over the past decade “we realized not much has changed. There is still incitement, still delegitimization of our community. There’s a very mainstream — not just ultra-Orthodox — perception in Israeli society that there shouldn’t be an LGBT community in Jerusalem, and if there is one, we should keep our heads down and not be public about it. This feeling has seeped into society, and some suggestive people act on it.”
Kening said LGBT Jerusalemites have experienced a wide range of reactions to the attacks.
“There’s been a lot of communal mourning, spontaneous protests. There was a big rally at Zion Square Saturday night and a vigil there on Sunday.”
The Open House has become a focal point for community members trying to process what happened and organize a response. Since the attack, the grassroots community center has been open nearly around the clock to provide counseling and serve as a refuge.
The administrators decided to temporarily close the center’s HIV clinic to free up psychologists, social workers and volunteers to help community members, many of them teens, traumatized by the stabbings. They recruited additional volunteers, from mental health professionals to community activists, via Facebook.
“We’ve all been in crisis mode, working 20-hour days,” Kening acknowledged.
Kening said representatives of the Jerusalem Municipality reached out to the Open House immediately after the attack, but whether the municipality will heed requests from the LGBT community remains a question mark.
“The municipality promised to meet our needs and we’ve had some discussions” about how to make Jerusalem a more welcoming place for LGBTs, the spokesman said, declining to elaborate. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
The LGBT community has always had a “very complex relationship” with the municipality, he said.
“In recent years it has become more cooperative, but they have never really wanted us to participate in cultural events or other things the city organizes,” he said.
The municipality displayed “a lack of sensitivity” by holding a previously scheduled street party right under the windows of the Open House the day after the stabbings, he added.
“Our community center was full of traumatized kids who’d spent the night on our couches. Then [the municipality] posted a video online showing how Jerusalem was celebrating.”
While the LGBT community didn’t expect the city to stop functioning during the past week, it would have appreciated a reference to the attack on the municipality’s web page and on Facebook, Kening said.
Mayor Nir Barkat condemned the stabbings and said, “We will continue to support all groups and communities in Jerusalem and won’t be deterred by those who try perverse ways to prevent this. Clearly something went wrong here. The police will have to look into this deeply.”
The municipality’s spokesman’s office told The Jewish Week “the Jerusalem Municipality embraces the Open House at this difficult time” and has scheduled a meeting under the authority of the municipality’s head.
“The municipality provides financial support for the Open House each year, according to set and transparent criteria and activities, as it does for other groups which meet the criteria. The mayor’s door is always open for The Open House. There have been a number of meetings in the past and there will be more after he returns from abroad to give aid to the community as needed.”
Jerusalem’s LGBT community members hope some good will emerge from the tragedy.
One positive outcome has been the self-reflection expressed by some Orthodox Jews, including rabbis who visited hospitalized victims.
Last week about 30 young adults, some ultra-Orthodox Jews from Jerusalem, some members of the LGBT community, met in the city center to discuss the tragedy and get to know one another.
During the encounter, which was organized by the Gesher and Chavura Tziburit organizations, a teenage girl from the LGBT community told the group she is experiencing “lots of fear and anger, but I came to try to listen and let it go,” according to Eytan Morgenstern, Gesher’s communications officer.
“One of the young ultra-Orthodox men who came opened up by saying, ‘I don’t feel the need to apologize, I don’t feel that the murder represents me in any way. But just as in the Torah it says that when a murdered person is found between cities, the closest one must take responsibility — so, too, I came here,” Morgenstern said.
“We understand it takes time for attitudes to change, and we think this might be the catalyst,” Kening said, noting that the municipality is now considering whether to introduce an LGBT tolerance educational program adapted by religious LGBT activists.
“There are reasons to be optimistic,” he said.
Read More
InternationalNew Pressure On Poland For Property Restitution
N.Y. pols part of ‘sustained effort’ to bring issue to the fore.
STEWART AIN
STAFF WRITER
City Comptroller Scott Stringer, left, and State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. Getty Images
Lea Evron, a Holocaust survivor from Whitestone, Queens, has fought for years to win back title to the apartment building in Zywiec, Poland, her parents lost in the Holocaust. She finally won back the title in court, but the Polish government appealed.
After both an appeals court and the country’s supreme court rejected the appeals, a man who claims he owns the building filed his own appeal. He lost, but is appealing yet again.
“I don’t believe we’ll live to get anything — but maybe our grandchildren will,” said Evron’s husband, Jehuda.
Although 3 million Polish Jews were murdered in the Holocaust —more than from any other country — Poland remains the only country in the European Union that hasn’t passed a restitution law requiring private property confiscated by the Nazis or later nationalized by the Communists to be returned to the family or for the family to be compensated for it.
But in recent weeks there have been several significant developments that may increase pressure on the Polish government to finally deal with the issue.
Just last week, outgoing Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski — who in 2011 had called the lack of a restitution bill “a disgrace for Poland” — refused to sign into law a bill that would have severely restricted survivors and their heirs from reclaiming property in Warsaw that had been seized by the Nazis and then confiscated by the Communists that ruled Poland until 1989.
Ronald Lauder, chairman of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, noted that Komorowski referred the bill to the country’s Constitutional Tribunal to see whether the legislation would violate the constitution.
Gideon Taylor, the WJRO’s chief of operations, said, “For us the issue is not whether the legislation is constitutional or not but rather the fact that it is unjust.”
Passed by parliament June 25, it would have set a six-month deadline for rightful owners or their heirs to participate in administrative proceedings for property claims filed by December 1988.
Taylor pointed out that survivors and their heirs might today not even know such claims had been filed decades ago, and that this legislation would prevent them from pursuing their claim if they did not act within six months. In addition, it would end the practice of appointing a trustee to represent an heir who has not been identified. And it would have also denied owners the right to seek the return of large categories of property, including those in public use.
“The reality is that most people can’t recover their property because in order to succeed in court it is necessary to prove that the confiscation of their property by Poland’s former Communist government was incorrectly carried out because of a technical error,” Taylor noted.
More pressure on Poland came two weeks ago when the heads of three of the largest government pension funds in the United States called upon Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz to fulfill the country’s “obligation” to the survivors and heirs whose property was confiscated by the Nazis.
The three officials are New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and California State Treasurer John Chiang. Together, Stringer and DiNapoli manage pension funds totaling $340 billion.
The letter, dated July 30, is the “first step,” Stringer told The Jewish Week, pointing out that one of his predecessors, Alan Hevesi, used his position to leverage concessions on restitution claims from Switzerland in the 1990s. Hevesi threatened to move New York funds from Swiss banks and to withhold licenses the banks would need to operate in the state.
Their letter comes nearly a month after a bipartisan group of 42 members of Congress wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry to urge that the State Department continue its efforts to ensure the restitution of Jewish communal, private and heirless property seized by the Nazis throughout Europe.
The lawmakers wrote that many survivors in the U.S. “and around the world live in poverty knowing the property that was stolen from them and their families remains in the hands of governments and private owners who have no rightful claim.”
Among those signing the letter were New York Democratic Reps. Steve Israel, Jerrold Nadler, Nita Lowey, Joseph Crowley, Grace Meng, Kathleen Rice, Carolyn Maloney, Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano. Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin also signed.
Stringer told The Jewish Week that approximately 60,000 Holocaust survivors live in the New York area and that about half of them live at or below the poverty level.
All of these actions are part of what Taylor called a “new sustained effort to hopefully get this issue back on the national and international agenda.” He said it is “hard to estimate how many people would be eligible” to apply for property restitution, but that “most of the claimants would not be Jewish.”
Poland has long claimed it doesn’t have the financial means to make property restitution payments. In fact, Taylor cited a newspaper interview published in February by the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in which Irena Lipowicz, Poland’s ombudsman for civil rights protection, quoted the Finance Ministry as estimating in 2012 that a uniform property restitution law “could cause a sudden increase in the public debt of 18 billion zlotys [more than $4 billion].”
But because the issue has not been dealt with, she said a “property restitution industry” has developed in which property owners cede their claims to profiteers who give them pennies on the dollar and then seek compensation from the government.
Restitution payments were meant as “a remedy for historical injustices,” Lipowicz said, “What kind of injustice is being redressed here?”
She noted that it is “usually the elderly” who are not wealthy enough for court battles who “become easy victims for potential ‘claim hunters,’ even targets of intimidation and coercion. … If we initiated property restitution, for example by enacting the bill that was once vetoed by President [Aleksander] Kwasniewski, of course probably with certain modifications, we could give everyone compensation, perhaps even in the amount of 20 percent of the value of the assets that were lost — if we cannot afford more. It is important for this to happen quickly, and above all, for everyone to be entitled to it, rather than for instance having 5 percent of former owners and their inheritors recovering 100 percent but the rest nothing.”
Although the 20 percent offer might “outrage certain former owners,” Lipowicz was quoted as saying it “is a way out of the stalemate.”
“And for very elderly owners, that 20 percent could represent a huge amount, greater than what is being proposed by the ‘claim hunters,’” she added. “It seems more fair than the situation today. … I have also made an impassioned appeal for parliament to reinitiate legislative work as it concerns property restitution … The time is now [while] ... we still have EU funding.”
Taylor said several governments — including Australia, the Great Britain and Canada — are now lending their support for private property restitution not only in Poland but also in other countries in Central and Eastern Europe that have such laws in whole or in part but are slow in processing claims.
A property restitution program in Poland would undoubtedly be more difficult than in any other country because its 3.3 million Jewish residents represented 10 percent of the population when Nazi Germany invaded on Sept. 1, 1939, according to Michael Berenbaum, former director of the Holocaust Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
“Imagine what a Herculean job it would be if they said they would return all the Jewish property,” he said. “That’s one reason they have been avoiding it.”
Taylor noted that Jews in Poland “lived in urban areas and so clearly they had a lot of property. Living in villages and towns they owned lots of buildings, factories and houses.”
Asked about the financial drain on Poland to make such private property restitution payments, Taylor said his organization has suggested ways to finance it through “issuing bonds and through paying it over a few years — creative solutions could be found to restitute property.”
“It is complicated process,” he added, “but it must be done.”
stewart@jewishweek.org
Read More
New YorkAt LGBT Memorial Service, Orthodox Add To The Rainbow
RCA’s Rabbi Mark Dratch points to communal responsibility, says not the time to ‘retreat’ into defensive mode.
HANNAH DREYFUS
STAFF WRITER
A memorial service for Shira Banki, the 16-year-old stabbed and killed at Jerusalem's Gay parade. Congregation Beit Simchat Tora
When Sean Herzfeld, an openly gay Orthodox teenager from Westchester County, heard about Shira Banki, the 16-year-old who was stabbed and killed by a charedi protestor at Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade, he felt scared.
“I was sad, I was disappointed, but mostly I was really frightened,” said the rising junior at a local yeshiva high school. “It could have been me, or any one of my ally friends.”
Herzfeld spoke last Thursday night to a crowd of 300 at a memorial and solidarity rally for Banki at the LGBT Community Center in Lower Manhattan. Though there were only 150 seats, people flowed into the auditorium and stood pressed closely together, many wiping away tears as Herzfeld spoke. The crowd was diverse, with kippot, traditional women’s head coverings and rainbow flags sprinkling the crowd.
Herzfeld, an active member of JQY, a nonprofit organization that supports Orthodox LGBT Jews, recalled marching with his peers in the Salute to Israel Parade just two months earlier, waving a rainbow flag.
“Three days after the Israeli Day parade, I’d already resumed my usual teenage schedule including participating in school activities, extracurriculars and hanging out with friends,” he said. “Three days after participating in the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade, Shira Banki succumbed to her wounds on her hospital bed.”
The emotional memorial service brought together representatives from organizations representing a wide swath of the Jewish community, including Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, senior rabbi at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the largest LGBT synagogue, Rabbi Steven Greenberg, co-director of Eshel, an organization working towards the integration of LGBT Jews, and Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), America’s largest body of Orthodox rabbis.
Rabbi Dratch’s appearance, which marked the first time an RCA member spoke at a LGBT Center event, was considered a “historic” moment by many, especially in light of the RCA’s public statement of concern following the Supreme Court verdict on gay marriage in June. In the statement, the RCA rejected the court’s “redefinition of marriage” and cited it as a threat to Orthodox religious freedom.
Rabbi Dratch said he was “embarrassed” that his appearance at the ceremony was considered something special. Standing behind a podium draped with a rainbow flag, he spoke for five minutes denouncing the cultural influences that produce violent extremists and pointing to elements of communal responsibility for the tragedy.
“There are sins of commission and sins of omission,” he said, citing failure to “speak up” against pejorative or mocking comments as part of the problem. “Our community has been much too silent for much too long.”
He added that while the act of extreme violence might have been an aberration, it “festered in a community whose culture is too often pervaded by insensitivity, disrespect, vulgarity and intolerance.”
One attendee, who preferred to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, said it “blew her mind” that Rabbi Dratch was standing behind a rainbow flag.
Mordechai Levovitz, executive director of JQY and one of the event’s organizers, said that Rabbi Dratch’s remarks “more than rose to the occasion.” While he had spoken alongside Rabbi Dratch at a mental health conference in April, this was the first time he was officially representing the RCA, according to Levovitz.
“In the past, he was careful to say he was coming as an individual, and not necessarily to represent the organizations,” said Levovitz. “This time, we didn’t give organizations that option.”
A representative from the Orthodox Union and Yeshiva University president Richard Joel both said they would have liked to attend, but were traveling, according to Levovitz.
“There can be positive repercussions from this tragedy — the Orthodox world is beginning to understand the impact of negative messaging coming from the rabbinate,” he said. “It’s just not so simple to keep pushing away an already ostracized minority.”
Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist who has written extensively on gender and LGBT issues, said that those with severe mental illnesses do make use of the belief systems around them. “Racism, sexism and homophobia are all themes they could pick up on,” he said. Repeated moral condemnations can lead to anti-homosexual biases, heterosexism, and even anti-gay violence. “It becomes increasingly difficult for members of these groups to distinguish between the ‘sinner’ and the ‘sin’,” he said.
The attack at the Jerusalem parade has alerted people to the “unintended consequences” of hateful words and actions. He referred to the memorial service as an “amazing moment of dialogue.”
“What we saw on Thursday did not spring up overnight — it is the culmination of brave efforts to engage in dialogue for the past 10 years,” he said.
In Israel, several prominent Orthodox rabbis, including Jerusalem’s Chief Rabbi Aryeh Stern and Rabbi Benny Lau, strongly condemned the violence and pointed to the communal factors that may have contributed.
“It is not possible to say ‘our hands did not spill this blood,’” said Rabbi Lau, standing in Zion Square before hundreds of rainbow flags at a memorial rally for Banki and the Palestinian toddler killed in the West Bank. “Anyone who has been at a Sabbath table, or in a classroom, or in a synagogue, or at a soccer pitch, or in a club, or at a community center, and heard the racist jokes, the homophobic jokes, the obscene words, and didn’t stand up and stop it, he is a partner to this bloodshed.”
Miriam Wopenoff, a middle-aged chasidic woman from Crown Heights, stood in the crowd on Thursday night, a wad of tissues in her hand. She wore a long black skirt and a traditional black head covering. “I’m here to support friends from my community,” she said. “Many of them couldn’t be here.”
Zach B., who asked that we not use his full name for privacy reasons, just graduated high school and will be studying at a prominent Orthodox yeshiva in Israel in the fall. He attended the memorial service on Thursday night not knowing what to expect. Still, the weight of communal responsibility propelled him to go.
“It would be easier if we could just say ‘this guy was a nut job’ and be done with it,” he said, wearing a kipa, dark pants and button down shirt. “But we can’t wash our hands of what happened, until we try and make it better.”
Editorial intern Talia Lakritz contributed to this report.
National
L.I.’s Rice Joins Dems Against Deal
Freshman rep part of Israel delegation; B’nai B’rith raps pact but no consensus at Presidents Conference.
STEWART AIN
STAFF WRITER
Rice: Continued sanctions can yield “a better deal.”
Freshman Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-L.I.) returned from Israel Tuesday saying the briefing she attended with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only reinforced her conviction that the Iran nuclear pact is a bad deal.
“I thought he made a very compelling case to everyone in the room,” Rice told The Jewish Week. “I had felt confident in my decision when I made it. I had given it a tremendous amount of thought, and nothing I heard or saw caused me to waiver in that at all.”
Rice was one of 22 Democratic members of Congress who flew to Israel last week for a trip sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, the charitable arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The group sponsors such trips every two years for freshman members of the House.
It also brought over 36 Republican House members, and the two trips overlapped by one day.
The visits, which were organized months ago, came at a fortuitous time because they afforded Israeli leaders a chance to explain their opposition to the Iran nuclear deal just weeks before Congress is to vote on whether to approve it. Democrats are expected to be the swing vote because most Republicans already oppose it.
Rice said she opposed it for three reasons: it would “merely pause” and not eliminate Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon; sanctions that would be lifted under the agreement would not have the same crippling economic impact if they were restored because Iran cheated, and uncertainty that Iran could even be spotted cheating.
She added that “crippling sanctions brought Iran to the table — and they can again. There is no question that if we stick together and maintain these sanctions that we can get a better deal.”
In her opposition, Rice joins local fellow Democratic Reps. Grace Meng, Elliot Engel, Nita Lowey and Steve Israel, as well as Ted Deutch of Florida and Brad Sherman of California. Sen. Charles Schumer also announced his opposition.
A number Jewish Democrats in Congress, among them California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, have announced their support for the plan.
In explaining his decision to oppose it, Schumer said in a statement that he was concerned with as long as a 24-day delay before International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors would be allowed to inspect a suspected covert nuclear weapons site. Such a delay, he argued, “would hinder our ability to determine precisely what was being done at that site.”
In addition, he said, he was troubled that the U.S. could not unilaterally demand an inspection of a site, and feared that the provision for a “snapback” of sanctions in the event of an Iranian violation “seem cumbersome and difficult to use.”
The agreement expires in 15 years and Schumer said Iran, having been freed of sanctions for a decade and a half, would be “stronger financially and better able to advance a robust nuclear program. Even more importantly, the agreement would allow Iran, after 10 to 15 years, to be a nuclear threshold state with the blessing of the world community.”
But Secretary of State John Kerry, who led the American negotiating team, said here Tuesday that Iran is a “nuclear threshold nation today” and that it achieved that capability at a time when the U.S. and Iran did not speak with one another.
In remarks at a discussion hosted by Thomson Reuters, a multimedia group, Kerry scoffed at the suggestion that further negotiations would produce a “better deal.”
“It’s not going to happen,” he insisted. “There is not a better deal. [Former President] George Bush tried in 2008 to get a better deal and Iran went from 104 to 19,000 centrifuges. … We are confident we will know what they are doing. We are safer with this deal than without it.
Kerry said President Obama told him that he was prepared to use the military option to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, “but he said we owe it to the world to try to get an agreement … which is not based on trust, but which is verifiable. I believe we have that agreement and that we have enough intelligence capacity to know what they are doing.”
Regarding Israel’s opposition, Kerry said he has spoken with Netanyahu “and we agreed to disagree. But the U.S. has huge stakes in that region and we will never allow it to be threatened. We are engaged with them [Iran] and will be deeply engaged pushing back on their nefarious activities.”
Meanwhile, Jewish organizations have been slow in taking sides. B’nai B’rith International announced its opposition on Monday, saying: “We have doubts about elevating the international status of Iran, which has done nothing to prove it will keep its word.”
It joined the Orthodox Union, the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in rejecting the agreement.
The most prominent Jewish group in favor of the agreement is J Street, the self-described pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby, which said it believes the agreement “demonstrates that a core security interest of the United States — ensuring Iran does not get a nuclear weapon — can be achieved through diplomacy and without the use of military force. This deal makes the United States, Israel and the entire world safer, and it would be highly irresponsible for Congress to reject it.”
The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly took no position, issuing a statement calling on Congress to carefully review the agreement to “ensure that Iran will be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
Similarly, the Jewish Federations of North America urged “Congress to give this accord its utmost scrutiny.”
Morton Klein, president of the ZOA, said he was upset that so many Jewish organizations haven’t taken a stand against the pact when there is an “existential threat to Israel which could result in the massacre of millions of Jews and the deaths of large numbers of Americans and others.”
“It is as frightening and disgraceful as the deafening silence of Jewish leaders during the ’30s and ’40s,” he added, referring to the Holocaust.
A number of other Jewish groups said they intend to take a position but are still studying the agreement.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is now polling its 51 member organizations to see if there is a consensus, according to Malcolm Hoenlein, its executive vice chairman.
Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said in a statement that his organization is in the process of consulting with its leaders and “listening to expert voices reflecting the range of views on the deal. We are doing this in a thoughtful and deliberative fashion and as expeditiously as possible.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that at this point his organization is opposed to the agreement “unless the administration can answer” a series of questions about it.
Greenblatt said he expected the ADL to formulate a position “very soon.”
Greenblatt said also that he found “very problematic” the rhetoric directed at Schumer from progressives since he announced his opposition to the deal last Thursday evening. People on various social media sites have called him a variety of names including “traitor.”
President Obama said last week that opponents of the agreement are pushing for war with Iran just as they did in advance of the war with Iraq, and he suggested that AIPAC was behind the advertising blitz against to the deal.
Abraham Foxman, the immediate former national director of the ADL, was quoted by CNN as saying Obama’s rhetoric could end up “fueling and legitimizing anti-Semitic stereotypes out there that Jews are warmongers.”
Robert Cohen, AIPAC’s president, said in a statement that AIPAC’s facts are “well-substantiated and accurate” and that the TV ad by its advertising partner, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, does not mention Obama “in any way.” In addition, he said AIPAC took no position leading up to the Iraq War.
Recent polls have found that the Jewish community and most Americans are opposed to the Iran agreement. A poll released Tuesday by Monmouth University found that 41 percent of Americans believe Iran got more out of the deal than the U.S. And it found that 61 percent of Americans don’t trust Iran to abide by the agreement.
stewart@jewishweek.orgRead More
The Jewish Week
Freshman rep part of Israel delegation; B’nai B’rith raps pact but no consensus at Presidents Conference.
STEWART AIN
STAFF WRITER
Rice: Continued sanctions can yield “a better deal.”
Freshman Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-L.I.) returned from Israel Tuesday saying the briefing she attended with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only reinforced her conviction that the Iran nuclear pact is a bad deal.
“I thought he made a very compelling case to everyone in the room,” Rice told The Jewish Week. “I had felt confident in my decision when I made it. I had given it a tremendous amount of thought, and nothing I heard or saw caused me to waiver in that at all.”
Rice was one of 22 Democratic members of Congress who flew to Israel last week for a trip sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, the charitable arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The group sponsors such trips every two years for freshman members of the House.
It also brought over 36 Republican House members, and the two trips overlapped by one day.
The visits, which were organized months ago, came at a fortuitous time because they afforded Israeli leaders a chance to explain their opposition to the Iran nuclear deal just weeks before Congress is to vote on whether to approve it. Democrats are expected to be the swing vote because most Republicans already oppose it.
Rice said she opposed it for three reasons: it would “merely pause” and not eliminate Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon; sanctions that would be lifted under the agreement would not have the same crippling economic impact if they were restored because Iran cheated, and uncertainty that Iran could even be spotted cheating.
She added that “crippling sanctions brought Iran to the table — and they can again. There is no question that if we stick together and maintain these sanctions that we can get a better deal.”
In her opposition, Rice joins local fellow Democratic Reps. Grace Meng, Elliot Engel, Nita Lowey and Steve Israel, as well as Ted Deutch of Florida and Brad Sherman of California. Sen. Charles Schumer also announced his opposition.
A number Jewish Democrats in Congress, among them California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, have announced their support for the plan.
In explaining his decision to oppose it, Schumer said in a statement that he was concerned with as long as a 24-day delay before International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors would be allowed to inspect a suspected covert nuclear weapons site. Such a delay, he argued, “would hinder our ability to determine precisely what was being done at that site.”
In addition, he said, he was troubled that the U.S. could not unilaterally demand an inspection of a site, and feared that the provision for a “snapback” of sanctions in the event of an Iranian violation “seem cumbersome and difficult to use.”
The agreement expires in 15 years and Schumer said Iran, having been freed of sanctions for a decade and a half, would be “stronger financially and better able to advance a robust nuclear program. Even more importantly, the agreement would allow Iran, after 10 to 15 years, to be a nuclear threshold state with the blessing of the world community.”
But Secretary of State John Kerry, who led the American negotiating team, said here Tuesday that Iran is a “nuclear threshold nation today” and that it achieved that capability at a time when the U.S. and Iran did not speak with one another.
In remarks at a discussion hosted by Thomson Reuters, a multimedia group, Kerry scoffed at the suggestion that further negotiations would produce a “better deal.”
“It’s not going to happen,” he insisted. “There is not a better deal. [Former President] George Bush tried in 2008 to get a better deal and Iran went from 104 to 19,000 centrifuges. … We are confident we will know what they are doing. We are safer with this deal than without it.
Kerry said President Obama told him that he was prepared to use the military option to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, “but he said we owe it to the world to try to get an agreement … which is not based on trust, but which is verifiable. I believe we have that agreement and that we have enough intelligence capacity to know what they are doing.”
Regarding Israel’s opposition, Kerry said he has spoken with Netanyahu “and we agreed to disagree. But the U.S. has huge stakes in that region and we will never allow it to be threatened. We are engaged with them [Iran] and will be deeply engaged pushing back on their nefarious activities.”
Meanwhile, Jewish organizations have been slow in taking sides. B’nai B’rith International announced its opposition on Monday, saying: “We have doubts about elevating the international status of Iran, which has done nothing to prove it will keep its word.”
It joined the Orthodox Union, the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in rejecting the agreement.
The most prominent Jewish group in favor of the agreement is J Street, the self-described pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby, which said it believes the agreement “demonstrates that a core security interest of the United States — ensuring Iran does not get a nuclear weapon — can be achieved through diplomacy and without the use of military force. This deal makes the United States, Israel and the entire world safer, and it would be highly irresponsible for Congress to reject it.”
The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly took no position, issuing a statement calling on Congress to carefully review the agreement to “ensure that Iran will be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
Similarly, the Jewish Federations of North America urged “Congress to give this accord its utmost scrutiny.”
Morton Klein, president of the ZOA, said he was upset that so many Jewish organizations haven’t taken a stand against the pact when there is an “existential threat to Israel which could result in the massacre of millions of Jews and the deaths of large numbers of Americans and others.”
“It is as frightening and disgraceful as the deafening silence of Jewish leaders during the ’30s and ’40s,” he added, referring to the Holocaust.
A number of other Jewish groups said they intend to take a position but are still studying the agreement.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is now polling its 51 member organizations to see if there is a consensus, according to Malcolm Hoenlein, its executive vice chairman.
Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said in a statement that his organization is in the process of consulting with its leaders and “listening to expert voices reflecting the range of views on the deal. We are doing this in a thoughtful and deliberative fashion and as expeditiously as possible.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that at this point his organization is opposed to the agreement “unless the administration can answer” a series of questions about it.
Greenblatt said he expected the ADL to formulate a position “very soon.”
Greenblatt said also that he found “very problematic” the rhetoric directed at Schumer from progressives since he announced his opposition to the deal last Thursday evening. People on various social media sites have called him a variety of names including “traitor.”
President Obama said last week that opponents of the agreement are pushing for war with Iran just as they did in advance of the war with Iraq, and he suggested that AIPAC was behind the advertising blitz against to the deal.
Abraham Foxman, the immediate former national director of the ADL, was quoted by CNN as saying Obama’s rhetoric could end up “fueling and legitimizing anti-Semitic stereotypes out there that Jews are warmongers.”
Robert Cohen, AIPAC’s president, said in a statement that AIPAC’s facts are “well-substantiated and accurate” and that the TV ad by its advertising partner, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, does not mention Obama “in any way.” In addition, he said AIPAC took no position leading up to the Iraq War.
Recent polls have found that the Jewish community and most Americans are opposed to the Iran agreement. A poll released Tuesday by Monmouth University found that 41 percent of Americans believe Iran got more out of the deal than the U.S. And it found that 61 percent of Americans don’t trust Iran to abide by the agreement.
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