Vol. LXXXII
No. 27
Omaha, NE
3 Adar 2, 5763
March 7, 2003
CELEBRATING 82 YEARS OF SERVICE TO NEBRASKA AND WESTERN IOWA
“Shop Shalom” Brings Israel to Omaha by PAM MONSKY, Federation Communications Director While the intafada rages on, the tourism industry during the sale as well as provide home hospitality in Israel has been brought to a standstill; many small for the visiting Israeli merchants. businesses, shops and artists’ galleries are on the “Shop Shalom is built on a single premise…if conbrink of collapse. But there is something you can do sumers won’t go to Israel, then the merchants will something to help Israel’s citizens and economy. come to the customers,” said Zacharia. Daughter “Shop Shalom,” a Jamie added, “The four-day Israeli venidea of boosting the dor fair, brings 20-25 Israeli economy withIsraeli merchants out boarding a plane and artists and their is fantastic...this is “made in Israel” mereven better than chandise to Omaha. shopping online “Shop Shalom” is because you can see scheduled for and touch the merThursday, May 1 chandise and make a and Friday, May 2, personal connection 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., at with the shop owner the Park Inn or artist.” Regency Lodge, and Kutler and her Sunday, May 4, 12daughter, Traci, said 3:30 p.m., at the they became involved Jewish Community Getting ready to “Shop Shalom” are Traci Kugler, left, with Shop Shalom Center as part of the (holding daughter, Lauren), her mother, Sandy Kutler, because all the profcommunity Yom Terri Zacharia, and her daughter, Jamie Friedland. its go directly to the Ha’Atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) celebra- shop owner or artist. “Since the violence started two tion. years ago, what the Israelis call the ‘matsav’ or situaShoppers will be able to choose from a wide variety tion, the economy has evaporated,” Kutler said. of beautifully unique items including jewelry, t-shirts, Kugler added, “Losses based on the tourism sculpture, tapestry, clothing, glass, paintings, Judaica industry were calculated at $1 billion at the end and much more. All proceeds from the event will ben- of 2002, and there doesn’t appear to be any efit the Israeli shop owners and artists. change for the future. As we contact vendors in Heading up “Shop Shalom” are Traci Kugler and Israel, we’re hearing how individual lives are her mother, Sandy Kutler, and Terri Zacharia, and being affected…how people are just trying to surher daughter, Jamie Friedland. The two mother- vive day by day.” daughter teams are finalizing committees and lookFor more information and volunteer opportuniing for volunteers to help during Shop Shalom. A ties, visit the community website at www.jewnumber of volunteers are needed to work in shifts ishomaha.org, or call me at 334-6431.
Dan Patrick to Headline B’nai B’rith Charity Sports Banquet by LOIS EPSTEIN Emmy-award winning ESPN sports anchor/reporter, Dan Patrick, will be the guest speaker at the B’nai B’rith Charity Sports Banquet. The reception/dinner takes place on Wednesday evening, May 7 at The Holiday Inn Convention Center. In addition, Omaha media personality Otis XII will reprise his popular role as Master of Ceremonies. The Lodge annually honors the Metro area high school male and female student-athletes of the year and will present the premier athletes with their prestigious Bert Render and Earl Siegel Memorial Awards. The banquet represents the 49th annual recognition event that the Henry Monsky Lodge has sponsored. The Jewish service organization, distributes a portion of the proceeds to local charities and their youth programs. “Patrick will bring a unique perspective to our Banquet. He is recognized for his poignant interviews and dry wit,” said Gil Cohen, Banquet Chairman. “Again, the Holiday Inn Convention Center Ballroom will provide us with a great atmosphere for our event.” Patrick is primarily seen on ESPN’s SportsCenter. He also reports from major events such as the
Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals and Final Four, and has called play-by-play for select NCAA basketball telecasts since joining ESPN in March 1989. Patrick writes for ESPN The Magazine. He authors “Outtakes,” the magazine’s most popular page featuring a no-holds-barred, question-and-answer interview with the sports world’s most interesting figures. In May 2000, Patrick released a book entitled Outtakes, based on the magazine column. Patrick served as the primary host of ESPN SportsCentury, the network’s 30-minute, weekly series profiling the 50 greatest North American athletes of the 20th century. Additionally, he serves as host of The Dan Patrick Radio Show weekdays on ESPN Radio, which is carried by more than 600 affiliates nationwide. He also has his own web page linked to ESPN.com (espn.go.com/danpatrick) which serves as a vehicle for his musings on the sports world. (Continued on page 15)
Meat May Be ‘Murder’, but It’s Not a Holocaust, Jewish Groups Fume by JOE BERKOFSKY NEW YORK (JTA)--An emaciated death camp survivor stares blankly alongside a gaunt steer. “During the seven years between 1938 and 1945, 12 million people perished in the Holocaust,” the image declares. “The same number of animals is killed every four hours for food in the U.S. alone.” The poster forms the heart of a new national campaign launched last week by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that compares the Holocaust and the meat industry--and that is ruffling Jewish feathers. Dubbed “Holocaust on Your Plate,” PETA’s campaign and its companion Web site, masskilling.com, insists the Nazi murder of Jews, gays and gypsies mirrors “the modern-day Holocaust” that is the industrialized slaughter of animals for food. Just as the Nazis forced Jews to live in cramped, filthy conditions, tore children from parents and murdered people in “assembly-line fashion,” factory
An image from PETA’s (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) “Holocaust on your Graphic by PETA Plate” campaign. farms cram animals into tiny, waste-filled spaces, treating cows, chicken and lambs as meat-, egg- and milk-producing machines, PETA says. “It’s a direct parallel,” said Matt Prescott, PETA’s youth outreach coordinator. One of the campaign’s creators, Prescott, 21, said that as a Jew whose relatives died in the Holocaust he finds the analogy neither “off the wall” nor “radical,” but entirely apt. Many of his mother’s cousins, aunts and uncles are believed to have been killed in Buchenwald and Dachau, Prescott said, adding that his mother’s sense of social justice led him to become a vegetarian, and then vegan. PETA cites several Jewish figures as spiritual forefathers for its campaign, including Nobel Prizewinning author Isaac Bashevis Singer and the vegetarian Torah scholar, Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendelovitz. Singer was a staunch vegetarian whose fictional characters drew analogies between Nazism and man’s treatment of animals in books such as Enemies, A Love Story. In The Letter Writer from The Seance and Other Stories, Singer’s character Herman delivers a eulogy for a mouse, in which he says that “in relation to” animals, “all people are Nazis: For the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.” That phrase, “Eternal Treblinka,” became the title of a book on the subject by Holocaust educator Charles Patterson, whose Web site links to the PETA campaign. (continued on page 7)
INSIDE: Sen. Chuck Hagel Speaks on the Middle East ............................................................ page 7 Purim Stories, recipes crossword puzzle, and more, starting on ........................... page 10 Teen Age .................................................. page 13