The New York Jewish Week-Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Wednesday, 16 July 2014Dear Reader,
For most of the Jewish community, the ongoing fighting in the Middle East - the failed Egyptian-brokered truce, the resumed exchange of fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza - is the major story this week. We look at the foreign and domestic angles of the hostilities:
Joshua Mitnick in Israel reports on the effect the Gaza rockets are having on the population. Stewart Ain covers the pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian rallies taking place in Europe, and the threat of heightened anti-Semitism.
ISRAEL NEWS
‘It’s Something You Don’t Get Used To’
In Ashdod, the rockets keep coming and the frustration keeps building.
Joshua Mitnick
Israel Correspondent
Ashdod resident Yuri Friedman sits in his shattered living room. Joshua Mitnick/JW
Ashdod, Israeli — With 45 seconds to run for cover before the impact of a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, Yuri and Ana Friedman had spent the last week sleeping in their clothes for fear of an overnight attack as Israel and Hamas fought their third war in five years — putting this port city just 20 miles from Gaza in the line of fire again.
“I’ll tell you something: It’s something you don’t get used to,” said Ana Friedman, a 27-year-old economist who said that sirens have been ringing on average three times daily. “Our [daily] routine is broken. We don’t have much to do, except to sit at home and wait for the siren.”
But when the couple went to work on Tuesday morning there was hope that routine might be reconstituted: just before 9 a.m. the Israeli cabinet announced said it had agreed to an Egyptian-proposed cease-fire plan, which was supposed to go into effect immediately.
Two hours later, sirens again rang out in Ashdod. Then the explosions, and a phone call from a neighbor telling Friedman that she should come home urgently. One of the rockets had evaded the Iron Dome missile-intercept system and slammed into the front yard of a house right next to their apartment building. The couple returned home and found their floor littered with glass shards from a blasted-out window.
Ana said she started to cry. There was supposed to be a cease-fire, she said. “And it was supposed to be a cease-fire from our point of view. Can’t you see here?” she said sarcastically. “I said, ‘I’m going to invite everyone over to see the cease-fire.’”
Friedman’s frustration reflected the annoyance and dilemmas of an entire country as the first effort at a truce after a weeklong battle collapsed within hours and left Israel seemingly on the verge of a ground invasion into Gaza.
Over the objection of hardliners in his own cabinet and his party beating the drums for a land assault and reoccupation of Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to the cease-fire in an effort to keep the international community in Israel’s corner ahead of a possible messy ground operation.
“Hamas chose to continue the battle, and it will pay a price for that decision. ... When there is no cease-fire, our answer is fire,” Netanyahu said. “It would have been preferable to solve this through a diplomatic path; that’s what we tried to do today when we accepted the Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire. But Hamas isn’t leaving us a choice, but to widen and strengthen the battle against it.”
Netanyahu did the same thing before the start of Operation Protective Edge: with rising missile strikes on Israel, he nonetheless held fire for several days to give Hamas a chance to deescalate, and in doing so win international support. On Tuesday, he argued that after Israel agreed to a truce, the international community should support Israel if it needs to broaden and escalate a fight against Hamas.
But the prime minister’s diplomatic maneuvering didn’t impress hardliners in his government who have started to attack him for being weak-kneed on Gaza. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who ended his political partnership with the Likud over Gaza policy, ridiculed the prime minister for “hesitating” and immersing himself in diplomatic “formulations” aimed at the international community.
‘When I say ‘until the end’ I don’t mean landing another blow,” Lieberman said in a press conference. “The Israel Defense Forces must finish this operation in control of the entire Gaza Strip.”
The criticism reflected rising impatience among Israeli residents for an end to the cycle of intermittent war with Hamas. Jacques Kapp, a 29-yea-old Ashdod resident who also lives in the building next to where the rockets touched down, said that he was disappointed in the prime minister for agreeing to a cease-fire.
“We need to continue to take down Hamas to liberate ourselves and the Palestinians,” said Klapp, who said that Israelis can’t suffer the intermittent wars with Hamas. If it continued, young Israelis would soon start looking to move abroad. “Don’t reoccupy Gaza — get all of the leaders and bring down Hamas. We tried to talk several times.”
However, most Israeli analysts say that toppling Hamas is not in Israel’s best interest. For one, such a move would put the onus on Israel for administering the Strip. It would also create a security vacuum, which would most likely be filled by even more radical, jihadist groups.
“They will never occupy all of Gaza, because then we have to take care of everything, like the water and sewage, and who wants to do that,” said Mordechai Kedar, a fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan University. “If we want to chase out Hamas, then we have to expel thousands of people to Egypt. This is not easy at all. Getting rid of Hamas is not a realistic objective.”
Pledges to eliminate the thousands of Hamas rocket threat also sound unrealistic, said Kedar.
“For this you have reoccupy Gaza for months, and search every home and every tunnel. Many of the houses will collapse. … You’d be on the run constantly from the jihadists. What they might do is to reoccupy a two-kilometer radius from the tunnel, in order to get rid of all the tunnels.”
Hamas ignored the cease-fire out of weakness rather than strength, say analysts. The organization has struggled on the battlefield against Israel, badly needs some sort of “achievement” it can boast about to Palestinians and restore some of its luster.
“There is the issue of prestige; the military wing is very frustrated because all of the cards they pulled out of their sleeve failed,” said Shlomo Brom, a fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Hamas is still reeling from growing isolation, first from Syria, which is embroiled in a civil war. And now from Egypt’s leader, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who views them as a terror group linked to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and has shut down critical tunnels used to smuggle weapons. That has created a financial crisis. Hamas needs “achievements” such as Egypt consent to open up the Rafa Crossing or the transfer of money into the Strip to pay its workforce. It has tried to showcase efforts at psychological warfare — such as text message sent to hundreds of thousands of Israelis.
“Their main supporters have stopped,” said Brom. “They’re in a situation in which they ran out of financial resources and they could not pay salaries. That,” Brom concluded, “was the main issue.”
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ISRAEL NEWS
Conflict With Hamas Unleashes Hatred Of Israel
Homeland Security officials brief Jewish leaders; French synagogues targeted; scuffles in L.A., Boston.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Smoke billows from the Gaza Strip Tuesday after an Israeli air strike. Getty Images
In Antwerp, Belgium, last Saturday, approximately 500 people attended a protest against Israel’s retaliatory assault on Hamas, chanting in Arabic, “Slaughter the Jews.”
On Sunday, a similar demonstration in Paris by thousands of protestors turned ugly after 150 protestors broke away and carried out what European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor called an “attempted lynching” outside a local synagogue filled with 200 Jewish worshippers. The Jews had to wait inside until police could rescue them while a private Jewish security team battled the protestors.
Pro-Hamas rioters targeted two other French synagogues over the weekend — one was fire bombed, and three Jews were hurt when rioters tried unsuccessfully to storm the synagogue.
In recent days there were several pro-Hamas rallies in Germany at which protestors shouted anti-Semitic slogans. And in The Hague, the Netherlands, hundreds of people filled a central shopping area, carrying signs that juxtaposed the Israeli flag with the flag of Nazi Germany. One held a sign that read: “Stop doing what Hitler did to you.”
Such violent and vicious anti-Israel protests are not unique to Europe. In Los Angeles last weekend, four people were arrested for allegedly brandishing sticks and interfering with a pro-Israel demonstration. And in Boston, anti-Israel protestors physically assaulted Jews.
Alarmed that such extremist demonstrations and violence has spread to American shores, senior Homeland Security officials spoke with Jewish leaders in a conference call Monday.
In a statement, the Secure Community Network, the security arm of national Jewish umbrella groups here, said the 200 Jewish leaders on the call “discussed the security implications of operations in Gaza on Jewish communities both domestically and worldwide, and reviewed security protocols for planned rallies and demonstrations in support of Israel.”
The Anti-Defamation League released a statement Monday asking that Jewish institutions, organizations and synagogues bear in mind the “tense atmosphere” the war has generated and “encouraging them to have a heightened sense of awareness, particularly in light of what is happening overseas.”
The war with Hamas was expected to reach a decisive point later this week when Israel will have to decide whether to launch a ground assault in the Gaza Strip, according to retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Michael Herzog.
“I don’t expect to see a major attempt to conquer Gaza — which would require staying there over a year — but a more limited ground operation,” Herzog said in a conference call organized late Tuesday by UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.
“There are some, both inside and outside the government, who have criticized the government, saying Israel should apply more pressure on Hamas because if we don’t we will find ourselves fighting them again soon,” he said.
Herzog, an Israel-based fellow at the Washington Institute. noted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Deputy Defense Minister Danny Damon Tuesday for publicly disagreeing with the way Israel has conducted the war.
“The Israeli goal is to reach a cease-fire that is stable and will last a long time,” Herzog said. “There is no sense in fighting Hamas every few months. The last cease-fire lasted a year-and-a-half. We expect a much longer cease-fire after this operation.”
He noted that had Hamas accepted the Egyptian-proposed cease-fire Tuesday, it would have signaled a major defeat because it did not contain any of the conditions Hamas fought for. Those include the release of Palestinian prisoners arrested following the murder last month of three Israeli teens; the opening of Gaza border crossings; and pay for tens of thousands of government employees. Egypt, the mediator, is far less sympathetic to Hamas now than it was under President Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who was forced out of office last year.
During the weeklong course of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, Israeli defense officials believe Hamas has lost 30 percent of its rocket arsenal — including 40 percent of its medium and long-range rockets, Herzog said.
“But they still have thousands of rockets, and ultimately it may require a ground operation” to destroy more, he said.
Of the more than 1,000 rockets Hamas has fired, Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile shield has successfully destroyed 90 percent of those headed for populated areas. It now has nine Iron Dome batteries stationed throughout the country. As a result, Herzog said, Hamas has “inflicted little damage.”
However, a Hamas mortar shell fired close to the Gaza border struck and killed a 37-year-old Israeli volunteer Tuesday while he was bringing food to soldiers. It was Israel’s first fatal casualty. Hamas claims that Israeli rockets and artillery have killed more than 200 Palestinians, most of them civilians.
As long as the war continues, there will continue to be pro-Hamas demonstrations that include anti-Semitic rhetoric, according to Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director.
“It’s not new,” Foxman told The Jewish Week on Tuesday. “We saw it during the last go-round with Hamas [in 2012]. These demonstrations, which are primarily anti-Israel and pro-Hamas also spill over into some anti-Semitism. But what has happened in the last couple of years is a greater use of the Internet to recruit and create ugliness. We have seen references to Nazis and Warsaw and Auschwitz.”
But Foxman said the violence at demonstrations outside French synagogues “shocked many of us.
“We are seeing something I’m afraid we are going to see more of — confrontation on both sides — Palestinians coming to places where Jews gather and Jews going to places where Palestinians gather. I think the police need to be more alert [to that].”
Serge Ben Haim, one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Paris, told IDF Radio that the attack Sunday was a defining moment.
“We could have had something like Kristallnacht,” he said, referring to the infamous night in 1938 when Nazis-orchestrated attacks through Germany and Austria killed 500 Jews and burned Jewish homes, synagogues and shops.
He said that when the pro-Hamas protestors reached the synagogue, they were armed with rocks, glass, axes and knives. Until the police arrived, Haim said, unarmed youth volunteers protected the building.
“On our side there were five lightly injured, three of them from being struck by the French police,” he was quoted as saying. “We skirted a true catastrophe.”
Daniel Mariaschin, international executive vice president of B’nai B’rith International, said the “latest attacks on the French Jewish community remind us that our vigilance in protecting the global Jewish community cannot wane.”
Referring to the scuffles in Los Angeles and Boston, he said, “Perhaps we are importing here the kind of lawless mob-driven way of conducting these so-called demonstrations.”
Mariaschin suggested that one reason for the large demonstrations is the “absolute access people have today to all kinds of media. Anyone can access French TV or media coming out of the Middle East and can see unbridled bias. That has to account for some of this activity.”
Asked about the two violent demonstrations in the U.S. last weekend, he replied: “The level of audacity has risen to a dangerous point. In this country we have been very fortunate that we have not had those kind of European or Middle Eastern-style of demonstration, but one has to be concerned about it.”
And pro-Hamas demonstrations have also rocked Chile, according to the World Jewish Congress. Not only was there a massive demonstration in downtown Santiago last week, but the home of a local Jewish family was stoned to the chant of, “Killer Jews,” and “Get out of the country.”
Foxman said Jewish groups should not be inhibited in staging their own pro-Israel rallies.
“I think they should notify local law enforcement, insist on their right to meet wherever they want and to be separated from those who are antagonistic,” he said. “It is important for Israelis to see such demonstrations, just as they see pro-Palestinian demonstrations. It is important to see Jews gather in support of Israel’s effort to be safe.”
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Hannah Dreyfus talks to young American students who are staying in Israel despite the danger, and Steve Lipman reports on solidarity missions organized by several Jewish organizations.
NEW YORK
As Rockets Rain, Local Teens In Israel Stay Vigilant
Trip organizers re-evaluate itineraries in light of danger in Israel’s south.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
YU students, above, at camp for at-risk Israeli teens in town near Gaza border. Courtesy of Counterpoint Israel
Rivka Hia, 19-year-old Yeshiva University student from Queens, awoke on the night of July 8 to the wailing of sirens. She, along with 30 other Yeshiva University students, was staying in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Malakhi, about 25 miles from the Gaza Strip.
“When the sirens started going off, signaling rocket fire, they woke us up and we boarded buses to Jerusalem,” Hia said.
Hia is part of the Yeshiva University Counterpoint Israel summer program, a five-week service-learning program during which students run English summer camps for Israeli teens in Southern Israel. Operation Protective Edge, the military campaign Israel launched again Hamas in Gaza, has forced the program to re-evaluate its itinerary.
“Our plans are changing as quickly as the rockets are flying,” said Kiva Rabinsky, the program’s co-director. “Safety is obviously our number one priority, but we don’t want to rob our students of the mission they came here to complete. We told participants they’d return to their posts in the south as soon as possible.”
And they have. Despite continued rocket fire and Hamas’ threat to target Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona, the Counterpoint students traveled back to the south on Monday after a four day stay on Yeshiva University’s Jerusalem campus. On Monday, half of the group began running a day camp for Israeli teenagers in Dimona, while the other half bussed to Arad to run a camp there. All students are now housing together in Dimona.
“We chose to relocate all the students to Dimona because it has the biggest bomb shelter,” said Rabinsky.
Though all the students were given the chance to fly home, none of them did. “When we got to Jerusalem, we were given the chance to go home the next day,” said Hia, who is staffing the camp in Dimona. “But not one person chose to go. It’s not time to pack up our bags. We came to Israel with a purpose and a mission, and we intend to complete it. If the Israeli teenagers we work with can live through this, so can we.”
Counterpoint Israel is not the only group of American college students positioned in Israel’s south. Emily Venable, 19-year-old rising sophomore at Harvard University, was in Ashkelon before the rockets began. She, along with 70 other students from different universities, was participating in a Harvard-sponsored archaeological excavation of an ancient Mediterranean seaport.
Their digging site was only three miles from the Gaza border. Of the 70 members who began the expedition, Venable is one of the only 14 who remain. When the rockets began, the group immediately moved north to Tiberias. Several of the staff members went to Jerusalem. Most of the students began to return home.
“This was my first time in Israel, and I didn’t want to leave,” said Venable, who described watching the Iron Dome in action. “I have never felt unsafe this whole trip. Israel’s methods of defense are supremely effective. Though the summer has turned out very different than expected, I haven’t been disappointed.” Venable, who is not Jewish, looks forward to sharing details of her summer with fellow students at Harvard upon her return.
“I came on this trip because I wanted to do something adventurous with my summer, but I’m leaving this trip with great pride and respect for Israel,” she said.
Yael Eisenberg, 18-year-old Yeshiva University student from New Jersey, is participating in another archeological dig close to the Gaza Strip. Accompanied by four other Yeshiva University students as well as other international student groups (from countries including Australia, Canada, Norway, and South Korea), the dig is located on Tell es-Safi, the biblical Gath. Eisenberg is staying on a kibbutz between Ashdod and Ashkelon, less than 25 miles from Gaza.
That equals less than 60 seconds to get to a bomb shelter.
“We are currently digging, and trying to clean the area as much as possible at the end of each day, in case that day is our last on the site,” said Eisenberg. The group has not moved from their original location despite the rocket fire.
Though she said there was “talk of ending the program early,” the group was given permission to continue digging. They are planning to continue until the end of the season, July 25, unless there is a further change in the security situation. The program, which started with 80 students, has been halved. Though only about 40 students remain, none of the YU students have left the mission.
For Eisenberg and her fellow students, running to the bomb shelter has now become routine.
“We go into the shelters three times a day/night on average,” said Sima Fried, a 19-year-old Yeshiva University student from Woodmere, L.I. “At the beginning we were all very nervous, some even terrified, but at this point it’s just what we have to do.” Eisenberg described it as developing a “third ear” for the sirens.
Though they are in a relatively open area, the Iron Dome has been effective at preventing damage.
“This entire experience has been unreal,” said Fried. “I have often seen videos of the Iron Dome, but I never thought I would become a part of the video. The white puffs of smoke from intercepted rockets have become part of the landscape.”
Eisenberg added that the group “constantly” sees fighter jets flying over Gaza.
“I personally feel quite safe here, as the tragedies from missiles have been close to zero,” said Eisenberg. “At the kibbutz we stay within a minute of the shelter, and when we leave the kibbutz I remind myself that there is a higher risk of getting hurt from a traffic accident than from a missile.”
Other permanent changes to daily life? “We have to take showers as fast as possible,” she said.
“My hearing has gotten more sensitive, and I go to sleep in comfortable clothing and shoes in case I have to run to the shelter in the middle of the night,” added Fried.
Young Judaea, the oldest Zionist youth movement in the U.S., currently has two groups in Israel, each with 40 American high-school students. None of the students have left the program. A third group for Russian speaking teenagers was supposed to leave on Monday, but the trip was postponed due to security concerns.
“Since the rocket fire, our students have been avoiding the entire center of the county and the Beersheva area,” said Avital Levine, Israel program coordinator. “When the conflict began last week, we moved the groups down to Eilat. They’ve also traveled up north to spend time in the Golan,” she said.
From her position in the U.S., Levine’s main responsibility is to keep parents calm. “I am constantly reassuring parents that we’re following all safety measures possible,” said Levine. “We’re not at a point where we have to bring them home — if that point came, we would do so. At this point, staff members are keeping students well informed and we’re sticking to safe areas.” Neither of the groups has yet taken refuge in a bomb shelter.
Despite the situation’s uncertainty, there have been unexpected perks of the program changes, at least for some. The NSCY all-boys summer program, Kollel, has been moved to the same northern moshav as the all-girls summer program, Michlelet. A total of four NSCY summer programs are now sharing the campus in the Golan (only one of the four was intended to be there).
“There are strict rules about boys not interacting with the girls,” said Avraham Tsikhanovski, 16-year-old Kollel student from New Jersey. “Boys are on one side of the campus, and girls on the other.”
Still, not all interactions can be avoided. Some boys have been caught on the Michlelet grounds. Though nightly staff patrols have done their best, some individuals have been able to break through.
“Israel has figured out a way to keep rockets from falling, but the advisers still haven’t figured out a way to keep the boys off the girls’ campus,” said one anonymous Michlelet student, laughing. She wished to remain anonymous.
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NEW YORK
Federation Leaders See — And Experience — Rocket Attacks
On whirlwind tour, JFNA raising $10 million for emergency campaign.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
UJA-Federation’s Alisa Doctoroff, right, with Jewish Agency’s Alan Hoffman in Israel’s south. Moshe Milner
A few dozen North American Jewish leaders from the United States and Canada were in the auditorium of a hospital in Ashkelon early this week, listening to a speech about the effect that the current military conflict between Israel and Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip was having on the Barzilai Medical Center, when they heard the effect with their own ears.
A siren sounded. More rockets were coming from Gaza.
The participants in the first day of a three-day solidarity mission sponsored by the Jewish Federations of North America organization all stood up, looking for a secure room where they could find refuge, said Alisa Doctoroff, president of UJA-Federation of New York, who took part in the mission. An official of the hospital informed the group that the auditorium “is a safe room,” Doctoroff said.
Everyone sat down. “We heard two booms in the distance,” the sound of Israeli Dome missiles intercepting the Hamas rockets, Doctoroff told The Jewish Week in a telephone interview before returning mid-week to the U.S.
The danger over, the speech continued.
“People are used to this happening,” explained Doctoroff, who during her brief time in Israel heard three other air raid sirens, joined Israelis in shelters and visited sites around the country that received funds from UJA-Federation.
The diaspora leaders were participating in a JFNA emergency campaign mission. Called “Stop the Sirens,” the campaign will provide immediate assistance to communities in Israel that have come under rocket fire in recent weeks.
The immediate goal is $10 million, and the effort is conducted in partnership with the Reform and Conservative movements, the Jewish Agency, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Israel Trauma Coalition.
Jerry Silverman, JFNA president, said the $10 million goal was likely to be reached by the end of this week.
Silverman told The Jewish Week the money raised in the emergency drive will go primarily to four areas: trauma care, support for seniors and disabled people who cannot leave their homes, recreational outings for children and staffing of air raid shelters.
He said the mission participants on Tuesday watched some 900 Israeli children, from the south, frolic at a waterpark in Herzliya, up north.
Silverman said the emergency funds will augment grants from Israel’s Fund for the Victims of Terror for the distribution of safety equipment and emergency information, and for trauma counseling.
“These funds will be able to counsel and help more than 40,000 children who live within 25 miles of Gaza and have spent a lifetime under fire, support senior centers that provide thousands of elderly living in poverty — many of them Holocaust survivors — with food and comfort, and offer counseling to the most vulnerable populations in Israel,” a JFNA press release stated.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations conducted its own solidarity mission to Israel early this week, and the World Jewish Congress was to conduct a separate mission there on Wednesday and Thursday.
JFNA will conduct a similar solidarity mission next week, for lay leaders and professionals from other local federations who were not able to sign up for this week’s mission that was organized on two days’ notice, Silverman said. The itinerary will “depend on what’s happening” in the Israel-Hamas hostilities. “This week’s itinerary was predicated on having access to a shelter — which came in very handy.”
Doctoroff of UJA-Federation said, “It is important for us to be on the ground and see what’s happening here.” After the initial siren in Ashkelon, she said, mission participants were shown what to do should they hear a siren while on the road (leave the van, sit on the ground and fold their hands over their heads). They also learned the location of shelters at subsequent site visits (many of the venues where they met Israelis were themselves secure rooms.)
For many of the participants, emergency sirens were a new experience. “You hear the alarms. You hear the booms. You feel your heart start to race,” Doctoroff said.
She recorded her impressions in a blog. “The experience … has been powerful in many ways,” she wrote. “First, there’s the power of fear. You can read about it all you want, but it’s only in experiencing the sirens and hearing the booms of rockets that you can understand the omnipresent anxiety and stress of this population under fire.”
Participants in the JFNA mission visited several locations, including a JDC-sponsored youth center in Sderot, university students and an absorption center for new immigrants in Beersheba, air raid shelters and kibbutz farmers near the Gaza border. They heard briefings from reporters and politicians, army officers and mental health professionals. They saw buildings damaged by falling shrapnel, and met a 16-year-old boy who was injured by a rocket in Ashkelon.
“I saw frustration — because of the disruption” in the pattern of daily life,” Silverman said in a telephone interview. “I saw a determination that [Israelis] are going to grow their communities. They’re not giving up at all.” But he noted that he also saw fear on the faces of Israelis who learned that their relatives were in areas that came under fire.
The mission, he said, “strengthens the connection” between Israel and diaspora Jews. “We were able to hold people’s hands and hug people. It gives you a small flavor of what Israelis are dealing with” on a regular basis.
The visitors got thanks for coming at every place they visited, he said.
Tali, a young girl at a shelter the group visited, gave Silverman a hand-painted picture with the words “thank you” printed at the top.
That was a highlight of the mission, he said. “That’s going up in my office.”
steve@jewishweek.org
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In other news, Jonathan Mark reflects on the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Summer, in which a disproportionate number of American Jews became involved in the voter registration drives in the South.
NATIONAL
Freedom Summer Memories
Black-Jewish alliance was brief, beautiful.
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Martyrs of the movement: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Wikimedia Commons
The naked light bulb was more harsh than bright. It was 3 a.m. on a sleepless, sweltering Florida night, June 19, 1964, in the St. Augustine jail. In a cell with two bunks were 17 Northern Jews, imprisoned for civil rights activities down South. Just 48 hours earlier they were relaxing at a convention for Reform rabbis in an Atlantic City hotel.
Now, on what felt like Passover’s leil shemurim (the Night of Watching), the men wanted to write something, a letter if only to themselves, a page for a future American seder explaining how and why they got from there to here. Someone had a piece of paper, the back of a report on the Ku Klux Klan. The night had hours to go but someone suggested the morning blessing, Matir Asurim, “Blessed are You, O God, who frees the captives.”
In civil rights history it has become legend, the “Freedom Summer,” and among Jews the legend may even be stronger. It has been frequently estimated that Jews comprised at least half of the nearly 1,000 whites who went South that summer, particularly to help with voter registration. Julian Bond, the civil rights leader was then with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a major organizer of Freedom Summer. Bond tells The Jewish Week that there had been no specific outreach to Jews, but “there was a great [spirit of] volunteerism in Jewish America, people who thought, ‘This is important, I need to be involved in this.’ Rather than us specifically appealing to Jews, this was something that appealed to Jews. It was an observable phenomenon, out of all proportion to the percentage of Jews in the general population.”
On June 21, Andrew Goodman, 20, Michael Schwerner, 24 (both Jews from New York) and James Chaney, 21, (from Mississippi) went off to investigate the recently burnt Mount Zion church in Longdale, Miss. This was the summer that volunteers were instructed to pack their duffels with bandages and antiseptics for first aid; $500, if they had to post bail; and four “head shot” photographs and the address of a hometown newspaper in case, well, in case something happens.
Earlier that day, Goodman mailed a postcard with a four-cent Abraham Lincoln stamp from the Deep South to the Upper West Side: “Dear Mom and Dad, I have arrived safely in Meridian, Miss. This is a wonderful town and the weather is fine. I wish you were here. The people in this city are wonderful, and our reception was very good. All my love, Andy.”
The bodies of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were found six weeks later. Goodman, a secular Jew, was never given a Hebrew name, but 50 years later, in Israel, Goodman’s brother Jonathan, now a Chabad chasid, recited Kaddish and lit a candle on his brother’s yahrzeit, all of their yahrzeits, 12 Tammuz (this year on July 10).
Bond recalls, “I was in Oxford, Ohio, at the training session for the summer volunteers. We had around 500 in the first [group], 500 in the second. Schwerner and Chaney, with the first group, actually left early because a church had been bombed [outside] Philadelphia, Mississippi, and that was their territory. Andy Goodman had the bad luck of just having been assigned to that section of Mississippi, so he went with them. I was in Oxford when Bob Moses, who was the head of Freedom Summer, told [the second group] that some of our people have been arrested and we haven’t heard from them since. For most of us that meant they were dead. I don’t think the volunteers understood that you could be killed for trying to register people to vote,” said Bond. “But what was interesting to me is that no one left. It was impressive to me that no one left.”
The previous week, on Jan. 17, the 17 rabbis had flown down to St. Augustine. In a black church Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. introduced the rabbis, “Here come Moses’ people,” and with the cheers in their ears they went out to march through what the Florida Times-Union years later described as a crowd with “broken bottles in their hands. Others had bricks. Red-faced and spitting, they screamed obscenities and racial slurs; the Jews who joined the march on this night provided new, poisonous opportunities for their insults.”
In the jail, the 17 rabbis gathered around Rabbi Eugene Borowitz who held the pen, listened to each of them, and he wrote: “We could not say no to Martin Luther King. ... We came because we realized that injustice in St. Augustine, as anywhere else, diminishes the humanity is each of us.”
Al Vorspan, now 90, told The Jewish Week, “I fought in World War II, fought in a lot of battles, but the scariest thing I ever saw were the police and the mobs in St. Augustine, greeting us with chains and billy clubs. When they arrested us, they turned us over to a guy whose name I remember after all these years, [Halstead] Hoss Manucy.” Vorspan, one of the founders of the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center, and later senior vice president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, recalls, “We were taunted by this vicious anti-Semite. We were threatened with electric prods. We asked to be in the same cell as the black ministers who were arrested with us, and we were laughed at, and they pulled out the guns.”
Vorspan had been going down South from the time of the Montgomery bus boycott (1955-56). “The Jewish community that now hails us; the Jewish community back then wanted us to get the hell out of town. They were scared. Now they all have civil rights museums, and most of them are quite nice and genuine, and the Jewish communities plays a very large role in maintaining them.”
In 1964, Bond recalls that he and Dotty [Dorothy] Zellner, a Jewish woman from a (communist) “red diaper family” in New York, “were the communications department for SNCC.” Zellner, now 76, says, “I first went down South as a volunteer with SNCC [popularly pronounced ‘snick’] in the fall of ’61. I became a staff member in ’62. Jewish participation began to grow, particularly after the (1963) March on Washington. By 1964 maybe 10-15 percent of the SNCC staff was Jewish, but no one really knows how many volunteers were Jewish because we never asked on the application forms.”
That summer is often recalled as the glory days of the black-Jewish alliance, and yet the alliance was unraveling before Labor Day. At the Democratic National Convention (Aug. 24-27), there was political brawling between Freedom Summer’s Mississippi integrated delegation and the state’s “official” segregationist delegation. Zellner says, when the attempt to seat the Freedom Democrats essentially failed, as President Lyndon Johnson and important Democrats (including some Jews) opposed it, so as not to lose the South in November, some black leaders “felt they had been betrayed by their white allies and that it would be very difficult to sit and plan strategy with people they couldn’t trust anymore.” Two years later, in 1966, SNCC voted to ask all white workers to leave the organization.
Did that hurt Jews more because they were most of the whites? “Yes, I suppose,” says Zellner. “It was a very painful loss for me, not to be in SNCC after five years, but I do understand where they were coming from. I never heard an anti-Semitic word,” she says, but sometimes “goodbye” is the most hurtful word of all.
Vorspan heard things differently. “They didn’t have to disparage Jews with anti-Semitic canards.”
The convention fight was hardly the only fissure that Freedom Summer. Despite the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act in July, and the martyrdom of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney, there was a surge of black anti-Semitism, that some said was really anti-white. A survey in August by the New York World Telegram and Sun found that “there is a rising tide of resentment in Harlem and in other New York Negro areas, but it is more anti-white than anti-Jewish.” That Freedom Summer saw these headlines in the JTA news service: “500 Stores, Mostly Jewish, Looted and Damaged in Riots in Brooklyn” (July 23); “100 Jewish Stores Smashed, Looted, As Negroes Riot in Rochester, N.Y.” (July 27); and “Jewish Storekeepers in Philadelphia Lose Millions in Rioting” (Aug. 31).
By 1967, James Baldwin wrote in The New York Times, “Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They’re Anti-White.” Even when Jews donate money to civil rights, the novelist wrote, “this money can be looked on as conscience money merely, as money given to keep the Negro happy in his place, and out of white neighborhoods.” Rabbi Robert Gordis countered in the Times with an article headlined, “Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They Want A Scapegoat.”
When it came to black anti-Semitism, says Vorspan, “I didn’t minimize it all. I think they were sick and tired of Jewish participation, if not leadership.”
Looking back, says Vorspan, “I thought the black-Jewish coalition was a God-send. We were like brothers. We achieved immense change. The civil rights legislation, all the amendments, were drafted by black and Jewish lawyers at our [Reform] conference room table.” And then, like summer itself, the nights turned cool.
Vorspan sighed: “That’s what broke my heart.”
Jonathan@jewishweek.org
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And The Good Life seniors supplement focuses how the 50-plus set copes with various changes in their lives.
The Good Life July 2014Affirming Life, Right To The End; Jewish Renewal Founder’s Spiritual Roadmap; Starting Late, But Not Too Late; Staying Young, With Cello; As Jewish Boomers Retire, Is South Florida Losing Its Appeal?
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
Affirming Life, Right To The End
Starting Late, But Not Too Late
As Jewish Boomers Retire, Is South Florida Losing Its Appeal?
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Enjoy the issue,
Rob Goldblum
Managing Editor
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Between the Lines - Gary Rosenblatt
New York Times' Parallels Are Forced, And False
I’ve long been a defender of The New York Times’ Mideast coverage, arguing that for all of its flaws on occasion, there is no consistent, inherent bias against Israel.
But I’m having second thoughts these days, based on the coverage of the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
Case in point: an editorial, “Four Horrific Killings” (July 7), and a news report the next day, “Israel Warns Gaza Targets by Phone and Leaflet,” both of which seem to me guilty of striving so hard for symmetry to the point of ignoring or playing loose with some basic facts about how the Palestinians and Israelis wage war.
One might think that a story about how Israel seeks to warn civilians in Gaza of impending attacks via cellphone calls and leaflets in Arabic would be portrayed as a humanitarian effort. Yet the Israeli policy of giving advance word to occupants that the building they are in is going to be bombed is described as “contentious.” To whom? I wondered. The Times cites “groups like Human Rights Watch,” which assert that such warnings “do not absolve the armed forces” of ensuring that “the warnings are effective.”
In the specific incident cited, Israel called the cellphone of someone in a house in Gaza that the air force was about to bomb, saying everyone must leave in five minutes. According to a survivor of the attack, as the occupants were fleeing, “our neighbors came in to form a human shield.” (This was after an Israeli drone fired a flare at the roof of the house, a common practice the Israelis call “the knock on the roof” to make sure people leave.)
As a result, the house was not abandoned and seven people were killed and 25 were wounded when the bomb hit. Israeli officials said they had done their best to convince the occupants to get out; the IDF maintains that targeted houses belong to Hamas members who use them to plan military actions.
Israel contends that terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah deliberately operate in civilian areas, often near schools or hospitals, hoping that Israel either will not attack so as to avoid shedding innocent blood, or will attack and be condemned by the international community for the use of disproportionate force when such unintended tragedies take place. (In fact, Israel maintains that the mosque it hit over the weekend housed a cache of weapons. Israel is currently investigating a weekend strike on a facility for the disabled.)
One of the serious flaws of the infamous Goldstone Report to the United Nations after the 2009 round of fighting between Israel and Hamas was that it refused to deal with the fact that the Arab militants wear civilian clothes and operate in civilian neighborhoods to cynically exploit the Israel Defense Force’s ethical code of avoiding innocent deaths whenever possible.
The Times article also stated that “Israel does not always give warnings, of course.” It noted that an Israeli missile hit a car in Gaza, killing its three occupants, one of whom “was reportedly a senior Hamas military official, Muhammad Shaban, and it seemed unlikely that anyone had called them to warn that a missile was on the way.”
Is warning your enemy the standard procedure called for in warfare against leaders of an acknowledged terror group? More to the point, is any other country, including our own, expected to act this way?
The Editorial the day before, on the tragic killings of the three Israeli teenagers followed by the murder, presumably by Jews, of a Palestinian youngster, calls upon “leaders on both sides to try and calm the volatile emotions that once again threaten both peoples.”
The Times writes that “after the attack on the Israeli teenagers, some Israelis gave in to their worst prejudices,” and points out that “hundreds of extreme right-wing protesters” chanted “Death to Arabs,” a “Facebook page named ‘People of Israel Demand Revenge’ gathered 35,000 ‘likes’ before being taken down,” and “a blogger gave prominence to a photo, also on Facebook, that featured a sign saying: ‘Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values.’”
The Times acknowledges, in a phrase, that “Palestinians have been fully guilty of hateful speech against Jews.” But it does not point out that Israeli officials publicly and regularly speak out against racial prejudice while ongoing incitement against Jews as evil baby-killers is supported, if not promoted, almost daily by the Palestinian government, which glorifies suicide bombers as “martyrs” and teaches children that Jews are apes or devils, among other sub-human descriptions.
Finally, the Editorial reports that both Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Abbas denounced the murders. But it does not mention that Abbas is now a partner in a unity government with Hamas, whose charter is to destroy the Jewish state and kill Jews, and currently is trying to do so through scores of daily rocket attacks against the Israeli population.
Without leaflets, phone calls or other advance notice.
Gary@jewishweek.org
New York News
The 10,000-square-foot Breadberry opened in May. Photos by Michael Datikash/JWGourmet Grocers Grow In Brooklyn
Borough Park's Breadberry is the latest to play the upscale kosher supermarket craze.
Amy Sara Clark - Staff Writer
Borough Park kosher foodies no longer have to leave the neighborhood to get their smoked-lamb-with-lemon-confit fix.
An upscale kosher supermarket has opened that aims to be a destination point for gourmet shoppers as well as those just looking to meet for a cup of coffee.
“In today’s hectic world and [with] everyone so busy, I wanted to be an outlet for everyone to come out and enjoy,” said Sam Gluck, who opened Breadberry in late May.
Gluck went into the food industry three years ago after a career in sales. At that time he took over Food Depot on 13th Avenue. He decided to expand to the gourmet market because he saw a need.
“I live in this neighborhood and I saw what people are yearning for,” he said. And that included himself. “I’m actually a big foodie,” he said.
Breadberry is the latest in a growing industry of upscale kosher supermarkets that are cropping up not just in New York and Florida, but also in such far-flung Jewish communities as San Paulo, Brazil; Paris, and, of course, Israel. Locally there’s Pomegranate in Midwood, Brooklyn; Cedar Market in Teaneck, N.J., Gourmet Glatt in Cedarhurst, L.I., in the Five Towns and Borough Park, and Seasons in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens.
“I think food marketers across the country are recognizing the maturity of the kosher consumer and the sophistication,” said Rabbi Moshe Elefant, COO of the kosher division of the Orthodox Union. Just take the kosher, free-range chicken farmer he met recently, who sells his product for $7.50 a pound.
“He’s getting a lot of requests because the kosher consumer is sensitive to what they’re eating and is even prepared to pay the money for it,” he said.
“This trend has really taken off,” agreed Menachem Lubinsky, president of Lubicom, a marketing consulting firm specializing in the kosher food industry.
Lubinsky noted that the gourmet supermarket trend is also affecting oldtimers.
“Even the existing stores that were out there before, they all have taken steps to project themselves as more upscale to offer a much better shopping experience,” he said.
“Some of them have fresh bakeries, some of them have extraordinary ready-to-cook sections. I know one [Evergreen in upstate Monsey] that has over 100 types of kosher meats,” he said.
In Borough Park, for example, “at least a half-dozen stores have upgraded just in the last year,” he said. But most of them are at the other end of the neighborhood, around 13th Avenue and 39th Street. Breadberry, located on 60th Street just off 17th Avenue, has cornered the foodie market on the southern side, he said.
The OU’s Rabbi Elefant, who lives “literally around the corner” from the store, is an unabashed fan.
“It’s head and shoulders over anything that exists in our community,” he said. “What really impresses me in the store is that somebody that wants to keep kosher can really have a variety of high-class kosher food.
With its wood accents and produce-filled baskets, Breadberry has the feel of a Whole Foods or Pomegranate — but smaller. At 10,000-square-feet it’s about half Pomegranate’s size.
The store has a kosher bakery where everything is made onsite from scratch, Gluck said, with bakers arriving at 4 a.m. each day.
There’s a sushi bar; an extensive flower area; a “curated collection” of artisan cheese. The sandwich counter has such offerings as a $15 “P.R.B,” with prime rib, smoked lamb (aka kosher bacon), chimichurri sauce, pickled onion and lemon confit, and a pulled brisket Panini with chipotle aioli and pickles.
The store also offers a hot food bar, a prepared-food aisle and a pickle and olive bar along with Ashkenazi standards such as cholent, pickled tongue, smoked herring and p’tcha (calves’ foot jelly).
And don’t forget the coffee. According to Gluck and Rabbi Elefant, Breadberry has the only coffee bar in the neighborhood.
“We sent our people down to Italy to research coffee,” he said. “Every person you see behind the counter has numerous years of experience in the non-kosher industry.”
He also has a culinary school graduate manning the “hostess counter” at all times to advise customers on everything from what to serve dinner guests to how to plate the food.
“We spent a lot of time and research to see what people really need,” Gluck said. “People get married very young in our community and they need help in cooking. They need help in setting up and we felt like that we could help with that.” n
Breadberry is located at 1689 60th St. in Brooklyn. (718) 259-6666. Breadberry.com.
amy.jewishweek@gmail.com
Food and Wine
All The GingerladiesWhip up a batch of 'gingerbrides' for your favorite bride.
It's summer, and you know what that means: a wedding practically every weekend. And while the wedding is the big event, I find myself at bridal showers, bachelorette parties and of course, sheva brachot. If you're attending any of these events, make sure to bring along some 'gingerbride' cookies. I promise they'll be the hit of the party!
Most craft or baking stores will sell a 'female' gingerbread man cookie cutter, and from then on it's simple to turn them into gingerbrides with the help of a little frosting. You can use the recipe I provide or pick up "cookie icing" at most supermarkets. Make sure to buy the icing designed for cookies; it will usually say that it dries hard or "sets up."
I also put some sparkly sprinkles at a local craft store to add a little "bling" to my wedding dresses, but of courser you can decorate them any way you see fit.
Amy Spiro is a journalist and writer based in Jerusalem. She is a graduate of the Jerusalem Culinary Institute's baking and pastry track, a regular writer for The Jerusalem Post and blogs at bakingandmistaking.com. She also holds a BA in Journalism and Politics from NYU.
Hide Servings & Times
Yield:
Makes about 4 dozen cookies
Active Time:
15 min
Total Time:
1 hr
Hide Ingredients
Special Equipment Needed:
Gingerlady cookie cutter
6 tablespoons (3/4 cup) butter or margarine, softened
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup molasses
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
Hide Steps
Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and molasses. Mix in the vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon and cloves.
Divide the dough in two and wrap discs in plastic wrap. Let sit at room temperature for at least 2 hours, or up to 8.
Roll out dough on a well floured surface to 1/4 inch thick. Cut out shapes, and place on a greased or parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Bake on 375 F for 9 to 10 minutes. With a metal spatula, remove from pans immediately and cool on a wire rack. Decorate with royal icing.
Hide Sub Recipe(s)
To make the royal icing, beat 3 egg whites and 3 tablespoons lemon juice together. Gradually add 4 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted, to the egg white and lemon mixture on low speed until smooth. Use immediately, or cover and refrigerate, or it will harden.
Hide Recipe By Amy Spiro
Jewish Week Online Columnist
Travel
The scenic Watch Hill cove is a popular summer vacation spot along the southern Rhode Island coast. Hilary Larson/JWThe Rhode Less Traveled
Heading off Interstate 95 just north of the Connecticut border, I drove recently along curving, two-lane byways through a thick summer forest, with little more in view beyond the occasional road sign. I kept heading south, and gradually the forests thinned out a bit; seagulls began to appear, along with wild pink roses and those bushy, stunted oaks you see near salt water.
The southern Rhode Island coast is a paradise for Sunday driving, which is what I was doing with time to kill one recent weekend. In the lazy heat of mid-July, the biggest question as I reached 1A, the scenic Shore Road, became: Left or right?
I turned right for Watch Hill, a classic Victorian-era summer resort whose staid, lovely character has altered little in a hundred years. Driving along the sea cliff — past grand, landscaped estates and thick green hedges — I felt as though I were in a Technicolor movie; I needed a convertible and maybe James Stewart by my side.
In this fantasy, I would pull into the Ocean House, a 19th-century resort atop a picturesque bluff. The sprawling yellow gables and wide, columned veranda feel like the hotel equivalent of the Titanic (pre-sinking, of course). But while artifacts and vintage fireplaces have been salvaged, the building is actually quite new — completely rebuilt a decade ago for a new generation of moneyed vacationer.
There were yachts aplenty in the Watch Hill harbor, though to judge from the profusion of surfboards and towels, most of the sunburned pedestrians seemed en route to or from the beach. Napatree Point is a spit of land that separates Little Narragansett Bay from the Atlantic; its calm waters draw bathers seeking refuge from the surf.
For bigger waves and a bigger beach, many head to Misquamicut, just a few miles up the peninsula along the Shore Road. Misquamicut is as proletarian as Watch Hill is posh. Small wooden bungalows cluster along narrow streets; lawns are tidy, with minimal landscaping and a cozy, neighborly feel. Along the beach, surf shops and dairy bars jostle for summer business alongside shops selling towels and sunscreen.
What both of these sections of Westerly, R.I., have in common are a languid New England feel and a dedication to simple summertime pleasures, decade in and decade out. Like ice cream parlors — and not the kind with flavors like lavender, wasabi or black peppercorn. New England is the redoubt of traditional dining, so maple-walnut and coffee Oreo are about as exotic as it gets.
And carousels. Specifically, the carousel in Watch Hill, called Flying Horse, claims to be among the nation’s oldest (it dates to the late-19th century) and features hand-carved wooden horses suspended along a backdrop of painted Victorian scenes.
Generations of summer visitors wax nostalgic about those horses, including a reliable stream of Jewish families from the cities. The first Westerly Jews, merchants from Germany displaced by European wars, settled here a few decades before those wooden horses; later arrivals hailed from Russia, integrating in a state known for religious tolerance.
In a place where people come to relax, not to make the social whirl, Jewish life is low-key. Congregation Sharah Zedek holds Shabbat services on the third Friday of each month, sometimes followed by a potluck dinner.
For families of all persuasions, Westerly’s popularity endures because it offers some of the closest unspoiled ocean beaches north from New York City. The trip takes just two and a half hours on I-95; from Westchester or Connecticut, it’s even closer, with little traffic on the rural byways leading to the peninsula. Westerly is popular, especially on summer weekends, but it’s no Hamptons.
And you can get here easily by train. Amtrak has hourly stops at the grand old Westerly train station, which looks like something out of an Edward Hopper painting.
The main commercial area of Westerly is up-to-date without being trendy. Rhode Island is full of vintage downtowns like this one, with quietly lovely brick buildings from the turn of the last century, but Westerly’s is rare in that it manages to be lively without the preciousness of gentrification.
The Pawcatuck River, which flows through downtown, almost has the feel of a European canal. Narrow and placid, its banks are flanked by leafy foliage and the rear side of a strip of commercial buildings (Connecticut is on the other side). Nobody comes to downtown Westerly for the nightlife, but many a summer visitor has spent time in its bustling coffee shops or strolling the tree-lined sidewalks.
I made my way to Wilcox Park, a shady, verdant gem that dates to 1898 — the golden age for American park landscaping. At any time of day, you can see children frolicking under Japanese maples or admiring the fountains in the lake. Spread a picnic blanket at twilight, take in a Shakespeare play or the 162-year-old Westerly Town Band, and your New England summer might just feel complete.
Rhode Island, travel, vacation
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