Aug 20
Jeanette FriedmanJews, local stories/community, politics
By Jeanette Friedman
It seems that there isn’t a spin doctor, media pundit, columnist, politician or Jew who hasn’t offered their opinion about the Park51 Cordoba Community Center under development two blocks from Ground Zero in Manhattan.
In 2009, when the proposal was put forth, there was little or no objection to what is now called “The Mosque at Ground Zero.” There are already many mosques in the city, and a few of them are even in that same neighborhood, with no objections. The location was chosen almost as a matter of chance, after another site on 23rd Street fell through.
So why is this “mosque” different than all other New York mosques? The heat began in May, 2010, and to explain how an interfaith community center morphed into a terrorist center, Howard Kurtz did an admirable job in The Washington Post, as he traced the evolution of a local zoning issue into a national political and constitutional tinderbox.
The match that lit the fires was struck by right winger Pamela Geller on her blog, Atlas Shrugged, which was then picked up by Andrea Peyser in The New York Post, and off went the right wing, into that special land where constitutional rights have no meaning. Geller says Steve Emerson, Executive Director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, claims he has tapes of Imam Feisal Rauf, interim program manager of Park51 and the leader behind Cordoba House—the center for multifaith dialogue and engagement within Park51′s broader range of programs and activities—that will reveal Rauf defending Wahhabism, calling for a one-nation state, meaning no more Jewish State, and defending Bin Laden’s violence. The Hudson Institute, a right wing think tank, posted The Mosque at Ground Zero: Who Is Behind It? by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury on July 30, in which he implies that there is trouble ahead, and essentially pours gasoline on an open flame.
The issue, a local zoning issue, was then picked up by conservative Republican Party members and Tea Party types in Congress, who ratcheted the fear factor up another few notches. These were the same congressmen who voted against providing health care to first responders who have been suffering since 9/11.
Then cable news shows picked it up, and milked it for all it was worth, never identifying the fact that those opposed to the mosque also opposed helping 9/11 families. The fear factor was so great by then, Fox News pundit Dick Morris said they were building a terrorist training center on the site. President Obama himself stepped in to remind everyone that this is still America, and that we embrace freedom of religion as part of our Bill of Rights. The following day he questioned the wisdom of choosing that particular site for Park51, but still upheld the US Constitution, as he had sworn to do on the day he took office.
After watching all the news clips and finding some unexpected useful footage from days of yore, Jon Stewart then summed up the situation in his own wacky way, last Thursday night, by making a very serious point.
On Friday, Governor David Paterson offered to step in to see if there could be a resolution to the problem and ask if he could help with finding an alternative site. The developers of Park51 said that they had no plans to meet with him.
And what did the Jews have to say about all of this? There were some who said we should stay out of it and let others fight this battle because we ourselves have been in places where it took major battles to get Jewish places of worship approved by zoning boards with agendas of their own.
Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, head of the interdenominational New York Board of Rabbis, a key interfaith leader in New York City who works with the Police and Fire Departments, lost many friends on 9/11. In a telephone interview he said that he had spoken with leaders at the Archdiocese of New York and the Council of Churches. “We suggest that the faith communities of New York use this crisis as an opportunity to elevate the conversation among the parties, without staking out positions. We should all gather together in one room and have a serious and substantive discussion that will result in one of two things: either there will be a compromise [accepting Governor Paterson’s suggestions] or the mosque will go forward as planned. Whatever decision will be made, we will know that we will have tried as diligently as possible to have people talk to each other instead of against each other.
“The religious community,” he continued, “has a responsibility to use the best of religion to promote discourse and a workable decision. That also means that probing questions must be asked and answered—and not avoided—by either side.”
Rabbi Ben Rosenberg of Congregation Beth El in Edison, NJ, spent most of last week talking to media about the rash of swastika graffiti that has plagued his community. As a son of Holocaust survivors and a naturalized American citizen, he says, “The Muslims legally have every right to build a community center at that location, but the wisdom of doing so, in light of being considered insensitive, is questionable. It would make sense to accept Governor Paterson’s offer.”
The Jewish Standard, the weekly that serves Bergen and Rockland counties, major bedroom communities that many in Jewish leadership call home (Abraham Foxman of the ADL , Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, co-founder of EDAH and Shvil Hazahav; Rabbi Shmuley Boteach; Michael Miller of the Jewish Community Relations Council and Rabbi Jack Bemporad of the Center for Interreligious Understanding, are only a few of the leaders who live there.) Many of them had what to say and laid it out for the editors in this past weekend’s edition. Bemporad had just returned from bringing eight imams to Auschwitz when it all hit the fan. In his opinion calling Rauf a terrorist is a great travesty of justice.
Everyone has an opinion, all agree there are constitutional issues that must be considered, and many, besides Rabbi Potasnik, want real answers to hard questions.
And finally, there is this article in The Washington Post by Jason Horowitz that pretty much tells the rest of America what New Yorkers think of this whole mosque mess. Basically, whether they for or against, they are telling outsiders to MYOB (mind your own business).
May 17
Jeanette Friedmaneducation, local stories/community
Jeanette Friedman • Local
Published: 14 May 2010
Charles and Rabbi Moshe Rosenbaum traveled from Geneva and Jerusalem to Paramus last Thursday to watch the Yavneh middle school graduating class perform “The Unlikely Hero,” a play honoring their father, Pinchas Rosenbaum, who saved Jews in Hungary during the Holocaust. In this production, Pinchas the younger was played by Leora Hyman and the older by Philip Meyer. The script was written and the scenery was designed and painted by members of the graduating class.
The script was adapted from interviews commissioned by the two brothers and their sister Leah, lifelong friends of Yavneh’s Rabbi Shmuel Burstein. Though he knew the family, the teacher first heard the story 25 years ago at dinner honoring the memory of Pinchas Rosenbaum, who died in 1980. According to Charles Rosenbaum, his father rarely spoke about his rescue efforts. But as his children traveled the world, they were approached by those he rescued who told them their stories.
read more
Jan 17
Jeanette FriedmanHOLOCAUST SURVIVORS, domestic violence, judaism, local stories/community, people, politics, survivors
Lenore Skenazy asked recently about the “Jewishness” of NYC and why that’s so. She asked in a NY Magaziney kind of way, but I bit and wrote that it’s hard to say in a few words why NYC is the center of the Jewish universe. It’s not a NY Magazine poll. It’s a hefty question on lots of levels. I did some editing since I sent it, but here’s my response, for better or worse.
I was born in NYC, one of twins born to survivors in Bed Stuy. I grew up in the ultra-O Jewish world, my father was politically and religiously active, I went to Jewish schools and Brooklyn College, and some powerful people grew up with me. I learned early on how things worked in town–in the Jewish world and the “real world.” I am a writer and editor who covers the Jewish world and more. I used to work for Tiger Beat and RightOn! and write nightlife guides to the city–now one of the things I do is edit a newspaper for Holocaust survivors.
New York City is the international center of the Jews–regardless of what others want to believe. Religiously, culturally, politically, intellectually–from the insane Netura Karta, to JewBus and Ethical Culture, to the world of the Jewish mind, theatre, music, business, entertainment, and even in terms of Zionism. NYC is the central hub, where Jewish power resides. Not Israeli power. Jewish power, and there is a profound difference.
Israel cannot be a world Jewish center because it officially denies vibrant Jewish denominations, old and new, that deviate from their standards of Halachic Judaism, which grows more Talibanistic with each new edict they issue (ie. arresting women who pray in prayer shawls at the wall, refusing to grant a divorce to a woman whose husband has been sexually abusing their daughter because he hasn’t harmed HER). Israel is problematical Jewishly because the American Jews who go there haven’t been able to make it a more egalitarian and tolerant country…yet.
And some of them don’t even want to do that. Many settlers went to the West Bank from Brooklyn, Queens and Riverdale, Manhattan, and the West Bank of the Hudson (Manhattan’s best kept secret). They became activists, like Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the pioneer rabbi in Efrat on the West Bank (came from the West Side) –and even he comes back to NYC to recharge his batteries.
As for America outside the greater NYC metro area, yes, there are Jews in the center of the country and on the other coast doing interesting things, but this town is where the Jewish heart beats, where the money is raised, where the media is met, and the UN confronted, and where most of the American Friends of offices are located. We feed the beast, so to speak, with our money and our kids and our ideas. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But our ideas inspire and spread everywhere. And when ideas come from the outside, we absorb them and make them our own.
We’ve got the Conference of Presidents, the WZO, the Jewish Agency, the headquarters of Hadassah, National UJA in its latest incarnation, UJAFedNY (arguably the largest charity in the city) Jewish Outreach, if I’d look it up, EVERYTHING Jewish is either headquartered here or has a branch office here.
Can NY be more Jewish than that? Yes–because here the assimilated generation walks around town with some of the wildest T-shirts proudly proclaiming their jewishness with a small j. The social media center of the Jewish world is located in this city, so the techies that built jewishnetworld are hanging all over town. Even Matisyahu is here. Along with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, and a gospel singing Orthodox Jewish Black congregation in Harlem.
Most New York Jews have a New York City State of Mind–that translates into a brash ballsiness, an unwillingness to put up with crap and refusal to beat around the bush–and when there are conferences out of town, the NY Jews often have to contain their impatience with their slower paced sisters and brothers.
NYC is where every denomination of Judaism feeds its spirit, using the differences and similarities among them to spark up some amazing stuff, like Dayenu (Enough) the domestic violence initiative taken up by The New York Board of Rabbis, consisting of rabbis of every denomination and beyond, or the Auditory Oral School of New York, founded by a Hareidi couple in their home ten years ago, who teach profoundly deaf and language delayed kids from every walk of life–including Arabs, Chinese, Asians, Chassidim, African Americans, etc, etc, etc,–to hear and speak and get ready for regular schools.
It’s where the largest contingent of Holocaust survivors and their children live, and where Ben Meed, who founded the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, and his wife Vladka, set the tone for Holocaust commemorations around the globe that led to the empowerment of survivors all over the world, and where New Yorker Ernie Michel was able start realizing a dream he had in Auschwitz–to bring Holocaust survivors together in Israel. New York is where the first meeting for the World Gathering of Holocaust Survivors took place. And Elie Wiesel is a New Yorker, too. He earned his stripes!
There’s something else the Holocaust survivors did in New York–they rebuilt neighborhoods in the images of their lives in Europe in Boro Park and Williamsburg, Flatbush, Crown Heights, Staten Island, Rego Park, Forest Hills–revitalizing synagogue life and Judaism of all sorts in this town. And if I try to name all the Jewish brainiacs (and not such smarties) in every conceivable field who have shaped this town and the world, I would never finish the list, and would be giving us an eyin hora (evil eye), (poo-poo-poo).
As for Jew food–it’s not about pastrami and killer kolesterol anymore! I’m waiting for someone to come up with Fro-Jew fusion any minute now!
Last bit–At Brooklyn College, in 1981, I took a course in Jewish ethics (hold the jokes). This question was asked on the final exam (you can check with the prof. He’s still at BC, his name is Sid Leiman):
According to the Talmud, do you have the right to deflect a massive nuclear bomb headed for NYC to Paducah, KY?
I said no, but I would deflect it anyway, and take my chances with God at the Pearly Gates because in addition to the numbers of people who lived here (compared to the numbers in Paducah) by allowing NYC and the surrounding area to be destroyed I would be destroying the center of the Jewish universe, and I am selfish enough not to want to do that.
And that is still true, and while I believe it’s one of the reasons NYC was targeted by the terrorists, our NYC attitude is ‘f’em!, we’re gonna do what we gotta do, and ain’t no one gonna stop us.
Jeanette Friedman
With apologies to the song
I’m that Jew York City girl
grew up ridin’ the subways, running with people
Up in Harlem, down on Broadway
I’m no tramp, but I’m no lady, talkin’ that street talk
the heart and soul of New York City
who should know the score by now
a native Jewish New Yorker, that’s me!
Nov 10
Jeanette Friedmanlocal stories/community
By JF NJS
Café Europa is a once-a-month social event for Holocaust survivors that many Jewish Family Service agencies around the country offer. For many survivors, the Café’s music, refreshments, and conversation offer a rare outlet for fun and entertainment.
Many survivors are lonely, many are in need, and they look forward to the Café as their raison d’etre. But in some places those programs are threatened by lack of funds. At Jewish Family and Children Services in Wayne, the Wallerstein Foundation for Geriatric Life Improvement is making these café afternoons possible. But what about the other important needs of the remaining survivors, housing and health care?
The newly established Humanitarian Aid Foundation, headquartered in Washington, D.C., has come riding to the rescue in Wayne by giving grants to help social service agencies subsidize case management and homecare for survivors. It recently granted $18,000 to the Wayne JF&CS to pay for a case manager for the agency that serves approximately 120 Holocaust survivors in Passaic and Northwest Bergen counties.
“Frankly, we aren’t sure of exactly how many survivors there are,” JF&CS executive director Abe Davis told The Standard. “We reach out, we get some results, but we cannot be certain we have found everyone in need. Some may prefer not to contact us. But it is one of our priorities to find them, because now is when the survivors need us most.”
At a time when federal funding has been cut back drastically, Davis said that he is grateful to HAF for reaching out.
“This funding supplements NJ State funding that goes directly to agencies that serve the Holocaust survivors,”-Davis said. “When the Humanitarian Aid Foundation came to us, it seemed they already knew there was a need in the area.”-
The Humanitarian Aid Foundation (www.humanitarianaidfoundation.org) was co-founded by former Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat and others.
Eizenstat, an Undersecretary of State for the Clinton administration, was a special envoy on Holocaust issues for five successive presidential administrations. He also served as ambassador to the European Union, and was extensively involved in all negotiations concerning restitution for Holocaust survivors from European governments and corporations, including the $25.5 million Hungarian Gold Train settlement under George W. Bush. He worked with Jimmy Carter on the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and with Ronald Reagan on the Holocaust Museum.
HUF was established in 2002, after the settlement of the slave labor case, to augment funds being distributed by the Claims Conference, because its founders believed there was not enough money to take care of indigent survivors around the world. In addition to making outright grants, the Foundation also finds matching funds to programs that assist survivors.
The non-governmental agency collects funds from major American corporations, individuals, private organizations, and foundations for the benefit of victims of war and natural disasters. It started with a generous contribution from the Ford Motor Company.
Eizenstat told The Standard that he got the idea while working on a slave labor agreement with Germany.
“We were having problems getting a final figure, and I committed to finding ways to get American parent companies whose German subsidiaries were put into Hitler’s service to bring in additional funds,” he said. “When I left the administration, I wanted to find a way to help in any event, so that gave me the impetus, but it was Dan McCormick’s and Wendy Pittman’s idea to set up the foundation. I didn’t have the leverage that I had when I was in government, and when I was there, I couldn’t raise funds for the cause anyway. So I was looking for a vehicle, and Dan came to me with this idea that was based on my work. It turns out to be a happy marriage of my desire to raise additional money to fill the gaps and their initiative to help me do it.”
Because the clock is ticking and the problem concerning indigent survivors is severe, the first round of grants has been designated for victims of slave labor who served during World War II. Last year most of the Foundation’s grants, almost $250,000, were distributed to a number of JFS agencies in Florida — a state that offers seniors no services, and where most of the country’s poor Holocaust survivors live. This year, the greater metropolitan New York area has received the bulk of funding.
American Holocaust survivors constantly plead with the Claims Conference, which is the primary distributor of reparation funds, to make changes in its allocations policies, so that funds for desperate cases would come forth more quickly. Roman Kent, chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, is also the treasurer of the Claims Conference, and has been a close colleague of Eizenstat’s through his negations with European governments who owed reparations. They have fought as a team for years to wrest concessions, money, and apologies from the Europeans.
Kent has also been fighting his own Claims Conference allocations committee for additional funding.
“Twenty percent right now goes for education, archiving, and commemoration,” he said. “But that can wait until we meet the needs of the indigent survivors. Unfortunately, that is a bitter battle that has yet to be won, but we have a job to do — to help our survivors.”
By providing badly needed funds, the Humanitarian Aid Foundation makes that job a little easier. The hot button-issue was the subject of an entire morning session held by the American Gathering in D.C. last weekend. Attendees, including survivor Abe Peck of Fair Lawn, Mark Sarna of Englewood, and other New Jersey residents met with colleagues from around the country to discuss it.
The UJA Federation of New York estimates that there are 25,000 survivors living below the poverty line in the New York area. In Florida, the count is higher. The New York federation has begun a $10 million survivor campaign. In Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and other cities, agencies and independent citizens are raising funds for the survivor population. In Israel, Noach Flug and Zev Factor, who run the umbrella organization that supports needy Holocaust survivors there, have shut it down for lack of funds — but that situation is in flux because it is now under public scrutiny, too. One of the problems has been establishing the number of Holocaust survivors still alive in the world. Some estimates are as high at 300,000.
The Foundation estimates that, all told, the country has approximately 130,000 Holocaust survivors in need, in nursing homes and hospitals and in private apartments with no family, where they have fallen through the cracks.
The Foundation also wants to serve the needs of other categories of survivors — including those who survived prisoner-of-war camps in the South Pacific and Japan during World War II — as all legal rights to compensation were waived when the U.S. began to redevelop its relationships in the region.
Nov 10
Jeanette Friedmanlocal stories/community
By JF NJS
Steve Averbach has returned to his home state of New Jersey, and he’s a man on a mission for Project Tikvah, a program of the Maccabi World Union that helps child victims of terror get physical and psychological rehabilitation through sports therapy.
Averbach, himself a victim of a terror attack, is upbeat about the prospect of inspiring people to help him meet the organization’s goals. With 8,000 victims of terror since 2000, there are 360 children enrolled in the Tikvah program, with more than 150 on the waiting list. He needs to raise enough money for equipment and therapists to accommodate as many kids as they can.
Steve Averbach with his family in Bergen County
“After the Lebanon intervention,” said Averbach, “we have to figure out how many children need to be added to the program…. We don’t know the numbers yet, but we know we need to raise enough money to bring everyone in.”
Averbach, who will speak at the JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly on Sunday, Oct. 29, at 7 p.m., told The Jewish Standard that helping the traumatized children is the only reason he would make the tough 12-hour flight from Tel Aviv to New York — a trip people complain about even when they aren’t confined to a wheelchair, as he is. “And if we reach our goal, it will be absolutely worth it,” he said.
He has been working with the Maccabi World Union for nine months, and his task has given him a direction and sense of purpose.
“Project Tikvah is much more than physical rehabilitation,” he said. “It’s about bringing the kids back into society — to a point where they can begin to function again emotionally, too.”
Born and raised in New Jersey, Averbach made aliyah 20 years ago and is an Israel Defense Forces veteran, former police officer, and a terrorism expert. He was riding the No. 6 bus in Jerusalem three years ago, when it was boarded by a suicide bomber dressed like a chasid. Averbach was suspicious and started to grapple with the man just as he blew himself up. Seven people were killed, 20 were injured, and 25 were saved — but Averbach suffered a severe spinal cord injury and became a quadraplegic.
Honored as a hero by the government of Israel, to many people, including his sister Elaine Sapadin of Englewood, he is now more of a hero than ever. He served in the Golani Brigade, in Gaza and Lebanon; he worked in the antiterrorism unit in the Jerusalem Police Department and was a private weapons instructor with his own security training school. But traveling around the world to raise money for victims of terror in his condition is the toughest job he ever had, and by all accounts he does it with high spirits and determination.
Sapadin told the Standard, “My brother has transformed the devastation of a horrific incident into a positive force to really make a difference in this world. He proves that the evil plans of those who seek to destroy us will be confronted and challenged…. Steve has to be a stronger fighter now than he was before, and he’s not giving up; he is forcing others to take action, and he’s had a dramatic affect on my own life and perspective. I love and respect him now more than ever.”
Averbach talks freely about the challenges of life as a quadriplegic, describing the overwhelming physical and emotional issues that can eat away at a person’s spirit. When he champions the children whose lives have been dramatically altered by terrorism, he aims to convey how great their needs are and how important it is to find the funding to help them recover their lives and realize their potential. The JCC on the Palisades event is the highlight of his trip, and everyone is encouraged to attend. (He’ll also speak to the students at Torah Academy of Bergen County in Teaneck and at Chabad on the Palisades in Tenafly. Other spots are Philadelphia, Deal, Alberon, Larchmont, and Manhattan, and he was on “JM in the AM” last Wednesday morning.)
Project Tikvah allows applicants to choose from a list of sports, including but not limited to fitness training, horseback riding, sailing, cycling, swimming, and waterskiing. Trained volunteers are charged with helping the participants to overcome their fear, regain their confidence, and believe in themselves.
Maccabi World Union was founded in Germany in 1895, is active in 50 countries, and has approximately 400,000 members. It sponsors local and regional games and are best known for the quadrennial Maccabiah games, which bring Jews from around the world to compete in Israel.
For information, e-mail simone@maccabiworld.org or visit www.maccabiworld.org
Older Entries
Twitter
Facebook
RSS
