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).

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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.
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May 13, 2010–The e-mail came from a news source in Europe, who got it from a guy in New York, who got it from a couple in Los Angeles, who got it from a guy who “just received this from my friend in Israel, who moves in high circles, who heard it from a consultant to the United States who meets once a month with the President in the White House. He is in the know. This is what actually has happened with the relationship with Israel and the U.S.A. and it is not pretty.”

What followed was a litany of “crimes” by the U.S. administration against Israel. Some of them were based on kernels of truth that had been convoluted into “reports” designed to galvanize people into action by injecting them with the fear factor. One accusation was exaggerated truth. Others were patently ridiculous, and some of them were oversimplifications of complicated diplomatic matters that are not controlled by anyone in the U.S. Some were outright lies.

How does one find out the truth behind these viral e-mails? One way is to check with Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (COP). As a fellow who spends most of his time getting his news first hand from newsmakers and reporters, he is a human aggregator who has to have his finger on the facts (or his nose in the news), day in and day out.

It’s no surprise, then, that he gets lots of inquiries about e-mails from the left and the right that are politically charged, and it’s not news to him that the Internet has fundamentally changed the way the COP and most Jewish organizations communicate and should communicate.

“Jewish organizations,” he told this reporter, “by and large have still not learned to use the new media effectively, but it’s changed how we do our work in many ways, because there is no longer a news cycle. [A news cycle is how long it takes for information to be spread through media.] Information is now transmitted instantly to huge numbers of people, and disinformation needs to be responded to immediately—because the more sensational the disinformation is, the faster it goes viral. Then, before you can correct it, in a matter of moments, people are on to the next issue.

“When I started in organizational life, there was a 24-hour news cycle for newspapers. Then cable TV changed that to a 12-hour and then an 8-hour cycle, and now, because of the Net, we are down to a matter of minutes. It also becomes increasingly difficult to discern what is true and what is not, and there’s no time to adequately check allegations and reports before they have been widely circulated.”

How do these viral e-mails affect the American Jewish community’s relationships with other communities, politicians and administrations?

“I see lots of energy and time wasted when false allegations are made about Israel, about the U.S. and the relationship between them, as well as myriad other subjects that affect what people think and do. Sometimes these reports are ludicrous. For example, before Passover, someone sent out a fake press release to say President Obama asked PM Netanyahu to ask the Jewish people not to say ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ at the Seder, but to say ‘Next year in Israel or elsewhere.’

“It was an attempt at humor, and when I got it, I told our chairman, ‘Wait a few days, and you will see this transformed into a news story that people believe.’ Three days later we started getting emails asking us how we could let this happen.

“There are other examples as well. Reports that new policies have been instituted that deny Israeli scientists access to the U.S. or that Israeli access to U.S. bases has been restricted, or that 20,000 people are coming from Gaza to the U.S., or that the Obama administration does not oppose Syria rearming Hezbollah, are just not the case.

“The problem is compounded when the ‘authors’ ascribe these allegations to a legitimate source that is close to the situation and knows what’s going on. This gives pernicious people the ability to write whatever they want and make charges without any accountability, while they hide behind the anonymity of the Internet.

“For example, the accusation about arms transfers from Syria to Hezbollah detracts from our serious discussions about American policy toward Syria. The same is true of allegations leveled against Israel and its government for harvesting Palestinian organs or poisoning water provided to the Palestinians. Spending time responding to reactions to this disinformation interferes with our ability to respond to real challenges and concerns that we need to address.

“And as far as Iran and terrorism are concerned, Jews should be prepared for anything, whether or not Israel attacks Iran. Jews and Jewish institutions should always take precautions to protect our constituents and our communities. There have been numerous attacks on Jewish communities, including the shootings in Seattle and in Los Angeles. These and other attempted assaults should raise our awareness and keep us on constant alert. But you don’t need viral e-mails to tell you that.”

Will the spam problem get worse as time goes on?

“The closer we get to the mid-term elections this year, the hotter it will get, and the more intense it will become. As we move toward 2012, it will get even worse. The community should not allow itself to be dragged into the excesses of the political silly seasons—which will be exceptionally tense this year, considering the charged atmosphere of fiercely contested races.”

This reporter was told by a participant who attended a closed meeting of COP leadership last Monday, May 10—where 50 heads of Jewish organizations were present—that Hoenlein expressed his concerns about these very things.

Was there a reaction?

“I think leaders are aware and beginning to focus on the problem. I could see that they were well aware of the specific e-mails I mentioned and also the general problem.”

Was a solution discussed?

“We are working to establish mechanisms to obtain the correct information quickly from reliable sources and get it to our members through the Daily Alert and other means, as fast as we are able to, so they in turn can pass it on to their constituents. This is not to cover up or dismiss legitimate concerns; quite the opposite. I believe these things have to be taken seriously because people will not know what to believe and what not to believe. My concern is that we will see much more of this in the future as the medium becomes more sophisticated and people learn how to manipulate it to greater effect.”

So is the Internet a good thing or a bad thing?

“I think the Internet can be a tremendous force for good and will allow us to reach a broader audience if we learn how to use it correctly. We are working on that right now. We have tried to work with officials in Israel and the Obama administration to get us responses to these reports as quickly as possible so we can then get the information out in a timely manner.

“Where there are real issues, they should be confronted and addressed with siechel (smarts). It’s not always what you do, but also how you do it that determines the effectiveness of your efforts.”

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So we sat down in front of our computers, clicked on Googletalk and together wrote Why Should I Care? Lessons from The Holocaust, a “living” book that is constantly revised on the Internet and in paperback; designed to grab young peoples’ attention and make them think about the world and their role in it.

For me, the journey began in Teaneck, New Jersey thirty-one years ago, during the first oil crisis. I drove my kids to nursery school and found swatiskas and antisemitc graffiti scrawled on the beige brickwork. I was furious, but there was no one to blame. Before 1979, relatively few people knew about the Holocaust, and more didn’t care. As the Jewish student advisor at William Paterson College, I decided I wanted to do a program for the kids.

In those days, Holocaust education was rare in any school system, Jewish or secular. There was scant material to use in classrooms. There were few statewide or national observances or commemorations. Teachers went to film catalogues and chose the shortest film they could find because they had just 40 minutes to make the point.

Most chose a 28-minute documentary by Alain Resnais called “Night and Fog.” But it closed down conversation. Piling horror on top of horror did not work. It’s even worse now—in the age of HDTV, hi-res violence, blood and gore hit student’s eyeballs daily and grainy black and white images from the past hardly moves them.

When Holocaust education was incorporated into national social studies standards, I realized students were getting too little too late. Already hard-wired for bullying and hatred, it was hard to undo damage by showing “Schindler’s List” and expect a paradigm shift in behavior and values. Today, there is erosion, misinterpretation, trivialization, and perhaps, worst of all, exploitation of the Holocaust as a fundraising tool and political bludgeon. So what good is studying the Holocaust if no one cares—or doesn’t know HOW to care?

In 1982, it already made sense to me to start in first grade with Disney’s “Dumbo the Elephant,” because it could be used to teach values and character—by showing that those designated as different can get hurt, especially if “good” people around them do nothing to stop it. I was told it was a desecration to think that way, but as time passed, I was convinced I was right and a little over three years ago, visited my old college buddy from Brooklyn, David Gold, when he was sitting shiva for his mother. We talked and decided to work together to create a new approach.

The perspective we offer in Why Should I Care? came from continued study and personal experience. He was a Judaic Studies instructor on the university level; served as Director of the National Commission on Youth for the American Jewish Congress; was a founding Director of The American Endowment School in Budapest, and served on the board of the Endowment for Democracy. In 1979 I founded Group Project for Holocaust Education which became Second Generation North Jersey, the first such group in the state. I was Second Generation Education Liaison to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and served on the first state commission on Holocaust Education in the nation, as well as the Goldberg Commission on American Jews and Rescue during the Holocaust. I was familiar with lots of the material being produced for classrooms.

At the same time, I was mothering three teenagers in New Milford High School, then a hotbed of bullying and antisemtism. That’s where my son Dan was barred from entering a classroom because a student decided “No Jews Allowed.” He was told he was going to hell for killing Jesus, and that Anne Frank’s diary was a lie. The principal told me the Holocaust was a matter of opinion, and what did I mean the Jews didn’t kill Jesus? Fifteen years after the state made teaching the Holocaust mandatory, my son’s classmates sneered their way through “Schindler’s List.”

That had to change. David and I realized we needed to use students’ vernacular and the context of their lives to break through their cynicism. With brand-new media and communication tools at our disposal, we wanted to reach students imbedded in pop culture and the Internet. And so we link to hundreds of sites that make points true to the legacy the Holocaust survivors want to leave behind. We use a cultural framework they understand.
At its worst, Holocaust education creates disdain for Jewish people, ramps up the Victim Olympics, and creates old fashioned antisemitism with a modern twist—the exact opposite of what the survivors want. At its best, the result is a caring, responsible human being who understands what the Holocaust really stands for.

Why Should I Care? is written in short takes that show how the unprecedented Holocaust reappears on a smaller scale in genocides today. We use Borat and Bono, the National Geographic Genome Project, Harry Potter, and genocide survivors’ stories as means to engage students, to get them to think critically and challenge them to care.

Yes, academic research and documentation of the Holocaust must continue—for the scholars are the engines that generate the stories containing the values needed to “repair” the world. They allow us to translate that material into language, form and perspective that works for students, survivors and people of good will.

There may be those who disagree, but David and I believe “Never Again” is not a slogan for Jews only. And Why Should I Care? is written precisely to make that point.

On the day after Halloween in 1979, Jeanette Friedman Sieradski was dropping off her children for pre-school at B’Nai Yeshurun when she saw that the synagogue had been defaced with swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti.

Friedman, whose parents survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, was appalled. But the experience changed her life, marking the beginning of three decades of Holocaust research and education.

Soon after the encounter, Friedman, an Ogden Avenue resident at the time, founded the first Second Generation Group of the children of Holocaust survivors in New Jersey. In 1980, she was appointed by Gov. Thomas Kean to the New Jersey Holocaust Education Commission. Locally, she began working with former Teaneck social studies teacher Ed Reynolds to revise the Holocaust curriculum used in the schools.

At the time, Teaneck schools used the Teaneck-Vineland curriculum, which Friedman found objectionable.

“They were using a Lenny Bruce poem and having kids do role playing games of Gestapo and Judenrat, which was teaching kids to be bullies,” she said. “We wanted the kids to know that the issue was not just about six million Jews who were killed, but about how people treat each other.”

On March 10, what Friedman calls her “31-year journey in Holocaust education” reached a culmination as she and her husband Phillip Sieradski presented the Teaneck Board of Education with their private library of some 300 Holocaust related books and DVDs. The collection will be housed in the high school’s Holocaust Center.

“It is an overwhelming gift,” said Acting Superintendent Spencer Denham.

Dave Bicofsky, the district’s director of School/Community Relations, recalled going to Friedman’s New Milford home with Assistant Superintendent Barbara Pinsak, to arrange for transfer of the gift.

“It is a treasure trove of memorabilia that help keep this topic alive forever,” Bicofsky said.

The collection will be available to Teaneck public and private school students and to the general public.

Many of the books are rare and unusual that the Sieradskis have acquired over the years, including out-of-print memoirs, primary history research texts and transcripts from major conferences.

The Sieradskis obtained much of the collection through their careers as editors and publishers. Their company, The Wordsmithy, has published Holocaust narratives, as well as books of general interest, including math text books and a history of the Haagen-Dazs® ice cream company.

“We edit and help people write their books,” Frideman said. She is assisted by her husband, a decorated Vietnam War veteran with a Ph.D. in educational administration, whom she describes as “the editor’s editor.”

For some of the Holocaust memoirs published by The Wordsmithy, survivors have related the material orally in Yiddish to Friedman, who then translated it into English.

One of The Wordsmithy’s recent endeavors is “Why Should I Care,” a book that Friedman co-authored with David Gold to teach the Holocaust to students from upper middle school through college.

The text is inextricably linked to the Web site: www. whyshouldicareontheweb.com

“We had to make the Holocaust relevant, and we saw the need to use popular culture,” said Friedman, noting that basic values can be taught through readings as diverse as Dumbo the Elephant and the Harry Potter series. “We want the kids to understand that the way they treat each other determines the condition of the planet.”

E-mail: prosnitz@northjersey.com

I didn’t go to the JOFA Conference this year, because, for me, it’s become a waste of time. Blu Greenberg’s statement, “if there is a halakhic will there is a halakhic way” is true. Unfortunately, the halakha is there, but there is no halakhic will. Solutions do exist, but rabbis have other fish to fry and they simply wore JOFA out. What are people supposed to think when the Israeli rabbinate shuts down an agunah conference where Orthodox rabbis were going to grapple with the issue?

Delude yourself all you want, but women still ARE second class citizens. The good guys have given up and settled for the pre-nup, which is hardly useful in cases of abuse. The best rabbis on this issue are Saul Berman in New York and Baruch Taub in Canada. (The late Rabbi Emmanuel Rackman was a saint if ever there was one—and he was excoriated by his peers for freeing women by using annulments.)

There is simmering rage among the women, a rage that is ignored. There are ugly cases that haven’t been resolved. And no one empowers the voices of the enraged women. JOFA certainly hasn’t done that. It seems that Women for Justice in Israel can cut your heart out by telling true stories on youtube, but men don’t take them seriously. And then what do you do with the anger those films generate?

Education is the key. Girls need to learn the truth before matchmakers come calling. They need to know they take their lives in their hands under the chuppah. They need to know what to do if and when they are trapped in emotionally abusive relationships and domestic violence. Halakha says if he abuses you, leave and do not go back. If you do, it means you are ok with the abuse–but abuse is never ok! Women need to understand that abuse and the agunah issue go hand in hand. And so do rabbis.

More: Mikvah ladies should check for bruises and report, not to the rabbi, but to a liaison to the local cops and social workers. The notion of separation of church and state has no place here, and mandatory reporting should be the rule in every single Jewish school–an abused child is a symptom of a serious disease!. Leaders and teachers have to talk to women during their Shabbat lessons (shiurim). Fliers in mikvot have to be available to let absued women know their options, and to teach them about the Silver Get Law and how to use the courts. The rabbis are not pleased with those ideas.

Another interesting tactic would be to try a test case under the RICO statutes at the Department of Justice A recalcitrant or vengeful husband demands everything from a wife for a get, up to and including her entire extended family’s assets and custody. Without the get, which belongs to her, a woman cannot get on with her life. She is a victim of criminal extortion and collusion, because the rabbis can grant him permission to remarry (heter meah rabbanim) after money changes hands, while she never can marry again. (In a case in Queens, the wife offered everything, but the husband is holding out until she can no longer bear children. She’s still trapped. Her husband is from a big shot Orthodox Zionist family and no one takes him on.)

Perhaps its time for a masked rally demanding Marriage Equality for everyone, not just gays! Handouts and eblasts should be ready, and women should call for a mikvah strike. Keep it going until the men realize they are hurting their mothers, daughters, sisters, nieces and aunts. Of course, women will have to be protected from their abusers when this is going on, which is probably why JOFA wouldn’t do it. No one said it was easy, but no one even talks out loud about such tactics either.

It seems no matter what, women can’t win because whatever method you try, the guys say, “It’s a forced get.” Unless, of course, you beat the bejesus out of the husband and break his knees until he wants to give it. That, by the way, halakhically, is NOT a forced get. But how many people do you know who want to risk getting busted for felony assault?

With the Silver Get Law, Reb Moishe Feinstein, z”l chose the civil, “goyish” court of law to act as the arbiter… unless you hand over the get there’s no custody, no community property. Who dares think they are smarter halakhists than he? Even the Satmar Rebbe used him as a posek (decider of Jewish law). And what about the law of the land being the law; Dina Di Malchutei Dina? When did that no longer matter?

It’s time to stop being polite and make some noise. As Rabbi Diana Gerson, Director of the Domestic Violence Initiative of the New York Board of Rabbis would say, “Dayenu! Enough!”

And I say, “Let’s get crackin’!”

The heads-up took place recently at the New York County Lawyer’s Association (NYCLA) headquarters on a street that borders Ground Zero. More than 300 lawyers, law students and activists came to sit at the feet of the crème de la crème of the legal profession, diplomats, think tank members and academics to learn about the ways courts of law can be used to limit the ability of a sovereign nation to defend itself, and, at the same time, to create negative propaganda to manipulate the news cycle. It was also a call to action. As one observer noted, “This isn’t a matter of right or left. It’s a matter of common sense and survival.”

Among those on the distinguished roster were The Boss, himself, retiring DA of the Southern District of New York, Robert M. Morgenthau; the former Canadian Minister of Justice and now member of Parliament, Irwin Cotler; and Ambassadors Gabriella Shalev, John Bolton, Dore Gold and Pierre Prosper. The list of professors and experts, including some of the policy wonks referred to above, spent an entire day explaining precisely what lawfare is, who uses it, what purpose it serves and teling their colleagues that something needs to be done about it because it’s more dangerous than it seems.

The day-long seminar was sponsored by The Lawfare Project, The European Center for Law and Justice, and The International and Foreign Law Committee of the NYCLA.

Here’s what participants learned: Lawfare techniques include lawsuits against journalists and against persons brave enough to speak and comment publicly about religion—including the issues of radical Islam, terrorism and its sources of financing. They can be workplace harassment suits filed against counter-terrorism agents or war crimes charges against soldiers, government officials, civilians and corporations. Because lawsuits cost lots of money even when they are “frivolous,” and because of negative public relations generated by the filing of the suit in the first place, a culture of fear is created that has a chilling effect on the people who are supposed to protect their citizens from harm.

The key question is how a legal system is used. Is it used to pursue justice or to subvert it? As more than one speaker noted, citing case histories, lawfare is as American as apple pie. The problem is that when Americans filed lawsuits against other sovereign nations, it did not go unnoticed. Right now, the international legal system, and human rights laws are being manipulated so as to harm, undermine and diminish the very principles they were enacted to protect.

The use of the law to pursue justice is very much part of the American legal and political tradition. But now the system is being abused by terrorists and their sympathizers to undermine a nation’s ability to defend itself against them.

Brooke Goldstein, director of The Lawfare Project, notes that the Organization of the Islamic Conference is lobbying the UN to bring back blasphemy laws and exclude the targeting of American civilians from any international definition of terrorism—and that Hamas facilitates the human rights prosecution of Israeli officials, while Spanish courts are trying former legal advisors to the Bush administration. She asks, “What kind of implications are these actions going to have on the way we defend ourselves?”

Human rights law is being turned on its head to attack the U.S. for its actions in Kosovo, its response to 9/11, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as to delegitimize Israel.

Speaker after speaker dissected the process. Basically it amounts to this: The main battlefields are the UN international Criminal Court in The Hague, as well as local national courts of law that exercise universal jurisdiction—allowing suits to be brought by two parties from the other side of a country’s borders—who have nothing to do with the country where the suit is being brought—ie., Hamas filing suit against Israelis in England or Spain.

There are those who want to turn the UN Charter into an international constitution and file charges against countries they know they could never defeat on the conventional battlefield. It is asymmetric warfare at its most subtle. If these groups (those who aim lawsuits at Israel and western democracies) have their way, the UN Security Council will be the sole agency to determine which nations have the right to defend themselves and which nations can be delegitimized. The UN, for example, has already used the system to criminalize the security wall Israel built to keep out terrorists, as well as Operation Cast Lead, the war in Gaza.

According to Goldstein, those are good examples of bias in the application of the law—where Israel was denied due process and the right to equality before international law. “It was lawfare at its best, executed by the ‘so-called’ judges themselves. If the judges were true advocates of international humanitarian law, they would never have ignored the fact that the security fence—brick and mortar—saved human lives and therefore was justified.”

It was time, speakers noted, to fight fire with fire. Nicholas Rostow exhorted the audience: “The consequences of the use of law are profound. Be vigilant, be aggressive, don’t be chicken. We have to play the game and it is our game. It’s not like we don’t have enough lawyers to do this.”

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gabriella Shalev explained how “The rule of law and respect for human rights is being perverted for political ends. Certain democratic states have created laws that go beyond their borders and use them to support terrorism, a political misuse that should be taken into consideration.”

Mark Shurtleff, Utah’s attorney general, waxed historical, talking about military strategics: “The rule of law is being hijacked to the detriment of human values. It’s a strategy straight out of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, [the general] who wrote that ‘all warfare is based on deception’ and that in fighting a stronger foe, success begins by ‘seizing something your opponent holds dear; then he will be amenable to your will.’ Two thousand years later, Chinese Airforce strategists … suggested the manipulation of rules dear to larger nations as weapons of war.

“America and the West hold dear the Rule of Law, and so our enemies have met with some successes of late in hijacking moral and western principles to turn international media and public opinion against us…the term lawfare was coined … in the 70s to explain this military tactic of dueling with ‘words rather than swords.’

“So if you let the enemy control the dialogue and manipulate the system, you lose.”

Irwin Cotler took the podium again and reminded everyone that, “Genocide begins with words, and there is no such thing as unlimited free speech. We are witnessing leaders of Iran issue nuclear, genocidal, and religious threats. State incitement to genocide is against international law, yet, as we meet, not one party has undertaken the mandated legal remedy to hold Iran to account. Not the U.S. or Canada or any signatories refer this to the UN Security Council. But to ignore the state sanction of genocide is to sanitize it. A man like Ahmadenijad, people who are in standing violation, such people enjoy legal immunity when they should be in the docket. They can come and go freely, yet they have no liability whatsoever. At this point, it is our responsibility to take back the juridical narrative and bring Iran to justice.”

Said Goldstein, “The legal system could be an appropriate if not ideal forum to solve disputes; indeed it is better to litigate then to shed blood. However, the problem of lawfare is, at its essence…the concerted effort to abuse and manipulate legal fora and international humanitarian law to impede the ability of the courts themselves to provide justice—using them as a tool of war and not as a forum for mediation. It dilutes the real meaning of legal terms like apartheid and genocide.”

The conference covered Rwanda, the Balkans, Sri Lanka, Darfur, Sudan and the indictment of Al Bashir of Sudan for genocide. It pointed out the pitfalls and possibilities of the uses of lawfare to take back a nation’s sovereign right to defend itself without finding itself subject to the paralyzing fear factors generated by its enemies.

Above all, the conference was a call to arms. Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice-Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations put it this way: “This is an historic event in the breadth of experts and top figures who have come to speak out and among those who came to listen. We put the issue of lawfare as warfare on the agenda for the first time and are empowering those who will file lawsuits to counteract the kinds of suits we are seeing filed against the U.S., Israel and other democracies.”

The Lawfare Project is gearing up to provide additional seminars internationally, to put advocates on notice and assist them in filing appropriate lawsuits to protect the Rule of Law and national sovereignity.

Those were the days before the Internet was a twinkle in all but a few eyes, and what was on that wall was a continuation of a hunt that had begun in the waning days of the Holocaust. For years after the Shoah, The Forward and Morning Journal would be packed with search ads, and the International Tracing Service was overwhelmed with requests.

As our parents leave us behind as the guardians of their history, the searches still don’t stop. And while there are those who scoff at what they think is futile fantasy, the searches continue to this day, 70 years after World War II began. Astonishingly, people do find each other and are able to bring the distant past into the present, triggering yet even more memories for us to remember for them.

At the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, I edit Together, the newspaper that contains many search requests received through snail mail and emails. The Searches editor is Serena Woolrich of Allgenerations, who also gets numerous search requests every month. We reach 85,000 people quarterly.

Yet the odds of one person making two connections in as many years are statistically astronomical. And so when my own mother found two childhood friends because of Together, two years apart, I was amazed. One came as a result of a story she wrote about her fruitless search for her mother’s resting place in the Warsaw Jewish Cemetery, and the other from a casual email I received at work.

In the first case, she hadn’t seen her friend, Harry Langsam, in 73 years. He lived in a town called Strizhev, where my great-grandfather was the chief rabbi, and was in the room when my great-grandmother passed on. Harry lives in Los Angeles. When he read my mom’s story in Together, he called the office in New York to find out how to reach her. On that very day, she was already on a plane headed for LA, where she was going to spend some time with my younger brother. When she and Harry met, my mother told me, “many tears were shed.”

My mother is the youngest child of a major Hassidic dynastic family, and turned 89 this Shabbos Tehsuva. She has always made sure that my siblings and I knew “from whom we stemmed and what we stand for,” and wrote a book in English—which she finished translating just this week for publication in Yiddish— called “Going Forward.”

She wrote it because she promised her mother she would, and to make sure that her descendants would remember those for whom we were named and who came before. I am a twin with a brother, and we were named for my maternal grandparents: Reb Nosson Dovid, z’tl, the Partzever Rov in Sedlice, Poland, and his wife, Yitta, z’tl.

In 1933, three years after my grandfather died of heart disease, his widow and my mother said goodbye to their “royal” existence in Sedlice and moved to Gensia Street in Warsaw, where they opened an equivalent of today’s bed and breakfasts. My mother was sent to Cracow to study at Sarah Schenirer’s Beis Yakkov.

When the war began, my mom came back to her mother in Warsaw. In addition to trying to care for the starving and the sick, they collected all the Torah scrolls in Warsaw and stored them in her dining room.

Most of my mother’s nine siblings were married and scattered around Poland. Some survived and some didn’t. One, her oldest sister Devorah, left Poland for British Mandate Palestine in 1934. Her brother Yaakov escaped from Treblinka, joined the resistance and died in the Ghetto Uprising. Another brother, the Munkacser Rov, Reb Burachel, z’tl, saved thousands in Hungary during the war. He was the one who arranged to smuggle my mother out of the Ghetto and so she eventually went to Budapest via Munkacs to become a passenger on the Kasztner Transport.

My mother never knew what happened to many of her childhood friends. Yet on September 22, Munish Morgenstern—now Mike Morgen—came to visit with a bouquet for the Rebbe’s daughter. And 76 years since she last saw him, Pesla Rabinowicz—now Peska Friedman—was reunited with her neighbor, the grandson of her father’s gabbai, his sexton.

The second reunion began with a simple email to the American Gathering from a 3G—a member of the third generation after the Holocaust. (Imagine, it is already five generations since the Holocaust!) Her screen name was LaurenBravo and she simply asked if anyone knew any survivors from Sedlice.

I responded, “Yeah, my mom. Are you very Orthodox? If the family isn’t Orthodox, she probably wouldn’t know them. My grandfather was the Partzever Rov and he had a congregation in the town.”

She emailed back and said the family wasn’t Orthodox now, but her grandfather’s name had been Morgenstern, and she was going to call her grandfather and ask if he heard of the rabbi. Could I call my mom and ask.

So I called my mom, and asked, “Do you know a Morgenstern from Sedlice?”

And she said, “Morgenstern lived upstairs in our house. He was the gabbai! Someone is alive?!”

The reunion between the two was arranged by Mike’s daughter, Sylvia Lebowitz, and his granddaughter, Lauren. Since our initial contact, Lauren has kept in touch with my mom by phone, and visited once with her mom.

Then when my Aunt Devorah, the pioneering Zionist and the last sibling, died just three weeks earlier, Lauren used her passing as the impetus behind the reunion. Both my mother and Munish seemed to need to somehow connect to the good days before the war.

After an initial awkwardness and a staring into each other’s faces to see if they could find the children they once were, a flood of memories was unleashed. There were details about the house they lived in and the street it was on, and the pranks they played on each other. Almost every sentence they uttered began with “Do you remember…”

Munish’s grandfather, the gabbai, died at a wedding. During the wedding he kept saying that the Rebbe was calling to him, but he didn’t want to leave until the wedding was over. It turned out to be the wedding of my mother’s sister, Tobah Chavche.

As we sat and ate a light lunch, I asked Munish about his experiences during the war. Lauren leaned over to me and whispered that he never talked about it, and that he was the sole survivor.

It turned out that just before deportations from Sedlice, Munish crossed the Bug River and became property of the Soviets. He was not able to escape until 1946, somehow made his way to the DP Camp in Fehrenwald, and finally arrived in the United States in 1951. His sister was already in the States, living in Newark, so that’s where he settled.

He found a job as a machinist in an airplane parts factory and did very well. His daughter raised her family in Livingston, New Jersey, and Lauren is an actress who is currently performing in a musical about Raoul Wallenberg.

A few days later, Lauren emailed me. “I felt like I was back in the old world, hearing their stories. I’ve had so many questions about my grandparents’ lives before the war and have worked so hard to research their families. I felt such a sense of accomplishment that I had helped bring these who people together who shared lives 76 years ago.

“I was so happy to hear them discuss the old times and their family and friends. My grandfather does not like to talk about his life in Poland, so their meeting gave me a chance to hear him talk. (I think it’s because he had no choice!) And besides all that, I love your mom, she reminds me of my grandmother.”

Munish’s visit was a shot in the arm for my mom. A few days later she told me, “Munish brought me back to the time when I was 8 years old and for a few minutes he made me feel very young again. That’s a wonderful feeling for an elderly lady.”

If you want to post a search, keep it short and send your email to amgathtogether@aol.com and allgenerations@aol.com. No guarantees it will work, but if lightning can strike twice in the same place, who knows?

With so much “stuff” there, who is going to notice those gorgeous new napkin rings or your gleaming flatware and crystal glasses?

In addition to a formal setting — charger, dinner plate, appetizer plate, water glasses and wine glasses, four kinds of forks (salad, fish, meat and dessert), two knives (one for fish, one for meat), three spoons (appetizer, soup and tea), and dinner napkins — there are ceremonial foods and objects that need to be available to the seder leader.

Sometimes making enough room means adding leaves to the table, putting two tables together or putting a round table at the end of a rectangular one.

Keep things as simple as possible. Use rectangular tables and get the smallest folding chairs you can find. You can get sturdy folding tables at Home Depot or Lowe’s, or use hollow core doors on saw-horses.

Where to start? Make a list of the things you will need for the ceremony itself:

* Candle sticks on a tray to catch melted wax. Use disposable aluminum bobeches to catch drips. After you light the candles, move them to the sideboard. It’s simply safer to keep burning candles away from a crowded table.
* Some people use a three-tiered matzah holder that comes with a seder plate on top; some use embroidered matzah bags with dividers. In either case, they are placed directly in front of the leader. The matzahs go underneath the seder plate, which is marked to let you know where to put what.
* Ceremonial foods placed near the leader so that s/he can assemble the seder plate. If you love your silver heirlooms, keep the horseradish, eggs and charoset in porcelain or glass bowls. Saltwater should go in a glass dish, too. You can put potatoes, greens and romaine lettuce in silver bowls, but you’ll work harder later trying to get out the water spots.
* Lots of bottles of wine, kiddush cups and matzah plates. Passover does feel special when everyone gets to make kiddush together and drink four cups of wine. If you don’t have silver cups, small wine glasses will do nicely. Well-balanced, stable glassware is best. Stemware tends to tip over when the table shakes. Be sure to put a saucer underneath each cup to catch spills. There’s lots of moving around and the saucers help, but don’t necessarily prevent accidents — so keep plenty of cheap paper napkins or paper towels nearby.
* Haggadahs. Each person needs to read from one. You may want to pick up some at the supermarket, or perhaps you have special editions; family members may have their favorites. Put the Haggadahs on top of the appetizer plate, under the dinner napkin.
* Elijah’s cup usually sits right in the middle of the table, where your flowers normally go. Put the flowers on the sideboard or in the living room, where they can be beautiful without getting in the way. Extra wine and the ice bucket can go on the sideboard, too.

Now that we know what goes on the table, it’s time to set it in a most attractive way.

When putting two tables together, make sure they are on the same level. If that’s impossible, use two separate tablecloths, or everything will tilt and fall if the cloth is pulled. You can customize your tables by choosing yardage from your favorite fabric store. One family bought a brocaded stripe in red, gold and black, cut the cloth to the lengths needed, and it looked great against gold-trimmed ivory china and gold-plated flatware with ivory napkins.

Make a matching cloth for a small TV table to set up next to the leader without interfering with your seating. It can hold most of the ceremonial foods, extra matzah and some of the wine bottles (which also can be placed on the floor below the table, along with other beverages.)

Finally, the question de tutti questions: Should you put a plastic table cloth over the fabric cloth?

A good white linen damask table cloth will be ruined forever by red wine. Stain-resistant fabrics are available, but you need another set for the second night, and you do spend time cleaning them. There are different grades of plastic, and you can sponge and wipe heavier kinds. Or use a thinner sheet, lift off, toss and replace.

Be creative — one family built a pyramid!

They must’ve had more room than most.