Fall 2009 B'nai B'rith Magazine

B’nai B’rith Helps Pen Death Ship Resolution

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PUBLISHED SINCE 1886

Jewish Poverty in

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Fall 2009

Giving Righteous Gentiles Their Due

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B’nai B’rith M a g a z i n e

2009

Photo courtesy of Masbia

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12 Jewish Poverty in America

It’s no secret that poverty exists in the United States and that it has been exacerbated by the nation’s recent economic turmoil. What might come as a surprise is how many Jews are among the struggling. According to the 2001 Jewish Population Survey, the latest numbers available, approximately 7 percent of the American Jewish community live below federal poverty lines—a family of four making $22,050 or less—while more than 14 percent hover precipitously close. This translates to more than 700,000 Jews, including 190,000 children. By Janet Lubman Rathner

20 Giving Righteous Gentiles Their Due

Righteous Gentiles were a small group of people who, with nothing to gain and everything to lose, made the decision to save Jews during the Holocaust. The name of each is inscribed on the Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. The dangers these individuals skirted throughout the Holocaust were significant. In German-occupied Poland, for example, household members faced death not only for hiding a Jew in their homes, but also for giving any Jew food or water. Who would take such a chance? By Janet Lubman Rathner

Tel Aviv could be any large world city—New York, Amsterdam, Barcelona. Today, 100 years since Tel Aviv’s founding as what is widely known as the first Hebrew city, what makes it unique on the Israeli landscape is its normality and vitality in a country wracked by constant conflict and division. Tel Aviv has grown from a settlement of newly arrived European immigrants to become the anchor of Israel’s biggest metropolitan area, the Jewish state’s economic engine, and the country’s cultural mecca. But is Tel Aviv’s cosmopolitan hustle and bustle a true representation of life in the Jewish state?

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With B’nai B’rith International playing a key role in drafting the legislation, the U.S. Senate—on the 70th anniversary of the ill-fated trip of the M.S. St. Louis—unanimously passed Resolution 111, which for the first time formally acknowledges the role of the United States in one of the avoidable tragedies of the Nazi era. Among the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust were 254 M.S. St. Louis passengers, who were turned back from U.S. shores. Some survived, but many suffered in concentration camps. By Janet Lubman Rathner

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Diaspora Jews Need to Pay More Attention to Israel

Almost half of the Jewish population in Israel believes that American Jewish organizations are not doing enough to bridge policy differences and ease the tensions between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government, according to the fourth annual Survey of Contemporary Israeli Attitudes Toward World Jewry, released during the summer. By Joel Samen

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BBI Funds Summer Camp Scholarships

25 Tel Aviv at 100 By Uriel Heilman

Acknowledging the Cost of Indifference

Cover photo illustration by Simeon Montesa

It’s ‘Five to 12’ on the Moral Doomsday Clock By Moishe Smith, President, B’nai B’rith International

In recognition of the constraints the current economic environment has put on families across the country, BBI has announced that it will fund scholarships for an important component of Jewish identity in a child’s life—summer camp. BBI will donate $150,000 to help 90 returning campers enjoy a summer at B’nai B’rith’s Beber Camp in Mukwonago, Wis., and Perlman Camp in Starlight, Pa. By Joel Samen

DEPARTMENTS Editor’s Note 5 From the EVP 6

Letter to the Editor 10 Aging in a Tough Economy 35

Point of View

It’s ‘Five to 12’ on the Moral Doomsday Clock By Moishe Smith President, B’nai B’rith International

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was sitting at my desk in Washington in June when I got an email saying there was a shooting at the Holocaust Museum. I was saddened upon learning the whole story—that the shooter was a known Holocaust denier in his 80s who took the opportunity, in his twilight years, to act on a sick dream. In doing so, he tragically took the life of an innocent security guard. With all the Holocaust discussions, training sessions, and education over decades, I find it incomprehensible that, 65 years after the end of World War II, a Holocaust denier can forge a solo attack on a Jewish institution just days after President Obama visited a concentration camp. Furthermore, who would have imagined that, in the year 2009, the president of the United States would speak to the Arab world from Cairo and find the need to have to convince his audience that the Holocaust was real? I find it absurd. The Holocaust deniers of this world, whether it’s Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or someone on a smaller stage, can no longer be given a public or private voice. Lessons of the Holocaust cannot be discussed and taught enough if we are to prevent future hatemongers from acting on their twisted desires and their sick creeds around the world. And when I look deeper into the state of the world, it occurs to me that we are at the equivalent of “5 to 12” on the moral doomsday clock—and that hate and danger

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abound. Many people speak and worry about the coming of the 11th hour; I am afraid the 11th hour might be here. The Western world has given opportunities over the years, on several fronts, to rogues— both nations and individuals—to learn a better way, and has never received adequate responses. I wonder how much longer the Western world can sit on its laurels. For years, people have talked about the carrotand-stick approach to countries like Iran; for years, people have said, “If the Western world would only extend the olive branch...” We have tried in Iran and have been shunned on every approach, at every turn. It is time to stop the rhetoric. We have wrung our hands and tried everything—cajoled, bribed, anything possible—to get the Iranians not to build nuclear weapons, to no avail; and to the point where now North Korea and its despot leader Kim Jong Il feel free to launch missiles and threaten to launch more. To stop such insanity, we need to impose and enforce increasingly crippling economic sanctions against Iran that have teeth. God forbid that Israel will feel threatened enough by a nuclear Iran that she will have to deal with Tehran on her own and become evermore a pariah among the world’s nations. Renewed pressure on Israel to make Middle East peace is problematic enough. It is hard to believe that, in the year 2009, the onus for pushing forward the Middle East peace process seems to be entirely on

Israel. There are no words for the absurdity of not putting some of the responsibility for peace and security on the Arab nations that surround the Jewish state. Why is the spotlight on settlements? Settlements should not be the focus of the peace process, as the issue is but one element in a vastly larger equation. Israel has legitimate security considerations that are paramount. There is the issue of Jerusalem, which is not only the capital of Israel but of the Jewish nation—it has been a Jewish capital for 3,000 years. And when the focus is on settlements, isn’t the logic of thwarting continued expansion of existing habitats somewhat flawed? There is a process of natural growth; people get married, children are born. In addition, most people don’t realize that some of these settlements are as large as cities of substantial size with significant populations. Dismantling them is not a viable option. And what about the dismantling of terrorist organizations? The United States has the gravitas and the clout to start putting pressure not just on its only real ally in the Middle East, but on those that should be taking the responsibility for stabilization, peace, and security in the region. Putting aside issues in making peace with the Palestinian Authority, the wildcard here is still what has happened with Hamas. Heretofore, whenever Israel has moved out of an area, whether in southern Lebanon

B’nai B’rith M a g a z ine

FALL 2009

or Gaza, wherever Israel has moved from a buttress zone that used to be held by Israel, the new area immediately became a target for staging rocket fire on Israel. The experiment of Israel moving out of areas has not worked. In fact, if somebody said: “You know what? We can have a Palestinian state if we put peacekeepers there,” we would have to respond that we know, from our experience in Lebanon after the Second Lebanon War, that the peacekeepers allowed the rearming of Hezbollah when they were

supposed to be keeping the peace. So, as we stand here at 5 to 12, let us hope that the Western world will take on the moral obligation to put an end to organizations, dictators, and rhetoric which threaten our collective existence. Only then will there be peace for and in Israel, and only then might deranged deniers be prevented from carrying out their insane missions against our institutions. With these hopes, I wish you a Happy High Holiday season.

Editor’s note As B’nai B’rith Magazine went to press, we learned with utmost sorrow of the death of Holocaust survivor Dina Babbitt, who doggedly sought the return of her portraits of Auschwitz inmates, painted for the “Angel of Death” Dr. Josef Mengele to salvage her mother’s life and her own. Babbitt struggled for decades for the return of the paintings, which now hang in Poland’s Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum; her tenacious quest garnered wide-ranging support, from the U.S. Congress to comic book artists. B’nai B’rith Magazine twice highlighted her efforts. On the first occasion, in the winter 2006 issue, she noted: “If it weren’t for those paintings, I wouldn’t be here. I want my family in perpetuity to see them. “I hear that an artist has the right to his or her own work. I consider them stolen.” Babbitt’s family has vowed to continue the fight for the seven portraits of Sinti and Roma women prisoners, also known as Gypsies, whom the Nazis considered racially and socially inferior. Also a cartoonist, Babbitt, just before her death, saw her cause championed in a comic book created by Marvel Comics and the David S. Wyman Institute of Holocaust Studies. We have learned that, fortunately, Bab-

bitt was able to see the magazine story on the Holocaust comic book and share it with some who bore witness to her struggle. Her unfulfilled plight should lend credence to the call for accelerated efforts to insist that stolen assets are returned to those who are so quickly leaving us. “It is incomprehensible that a Holocaust victim would have to literally fight to her dying day to regain her own artwork,” says B’nai B’rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin. “The death of Dina Babbitt before she was able to attain her goal is a most telling reason for the need to expedite the process of returning Holocaust assets to the ever-diminishing number of their rightful owners or the heirs.” On the following page, Mariaschin discusses a recent conference he attended in Prague that was dedicated to all aspects of Holocaust asset issues and underscores the case for speedy action. We can only hope that those efforts, and those of brave survivors like Dina Babbitt, might be rewarded. Hiram M. Reisner Editorial Director B’nai B’rith International

Vol 123, no. 3

Moishe Smith President, B’nai B’rith International Daniel S. Mariaschin Executive Vice President Harvey Berk Interim Director of Communications Hiram M. Reisner Editorial Director Janet Lubman Rathner Senior Editor Rachel Mauro Joel Samen Contributing Editors Simeon Montesa Art Director Vivian Hayward Graphic Designer Ruth E. Thaler-Carter Copy Editor Theodore Fischer Proofreader Advertising Office: Fulton Advertising 301-604-3466 Editorial Offices: 2020 K St., NW, 7th Floor, Washington, DC 20006 202-857-6681 or bbmag@bnaibrith.org Readership: Approximately 175,000 Signed articles represent the opinions of their authors and are not necessarily the view of B’nai B’rith or B’nai B’rith Magazine. Return postage must accompany unsolicited material, for which no responsibility is assumed. Contents ©2009 by B’nai B’rith. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A. The B’nai B’rith Magazine (ISSN 1549-4799) (continued on pg. is published quarterly (Spring, Summer, Fall,9) Winter) by B’nai B’rith, 2020 K St., NW, 7th Floor, Washington, DC 20006, and is indexed in the Index to Jewish Periodicals. Subscription rates: U.S. and possessions, one year, nonmember, $12; Canadian member, $12; Canada non-member, $17; overseas member (outside U.S. and Canada), $36; overseas non-member (outside U.S. and Canada), $48. Members of Hillel and BBYO, $7.50. $5 of member dues goes toward B’nai B’rith Magazine. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing offices. Notification of address change should be sent to Circulation, 2020 K St., NW, 7th Floor, Washington, DC 20006, or call 888-388-4224. Please allow six to eight weeks for change. Postmaster: Send address changes to B’nai B’rith Magazine, 2020 K St., NW, 7th Floor, Washington, DC 20006. B’Nai B’rith 5

From the EVP

Not To Be Forgotten Seeking Justice in Restitution of Nazi-era Thefts By Daniel S. Mariaschin Executive Vice President, B’nai B’rith International

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t has been said that the Holocaust was not only the biggest murder in history, it was also the biggest robbery. During the brutal Holocaust years, the Nazis and their collaborators confiscated—stole—tens of thousands of communal and private properties. Synagogues, schools, libraries, hospitals, soup kitchens, and other community institutions were scooped up without regard in country after country. Tens of thousands of homes, apartments, factories, and workshops were taken as well. The Nazis pilfered thousands of artworks and objects of Judaica, many of them priceless, from individuals and institutions. In a number of cases, the most valuable items wound up in private collections of the era’s most notorious killers and criminals, and in Nazi-controlled museums. Today, we still see the original owners, or their descendants, desperately struggling to regain possession of their belongings— because it is the just thing to do—and to preserve what remains of family legacies. And in 1945 at war’s end, communist successor governments in Nazi-occupied countries became complicit in the continued plunder, “nationalizing” many of these properties and paying no compensation to those few who may have survived the Holocaust, or to their families. Years passed and, with the seeming permanent divisions in Europe, it became impossible for survivors to claim lost 6 Fall 2009

properties. Decimated Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe had to make do with a lone remaining synagogue here and there, many barely eking out existences on small government subsidies or some assistance from abroad. The collapse of communism in Europe in 1989, and then the implosion of the USSR in 1991, presented an unexpected opportunity and offered some hope to right the wrongs of the past. Efforts were made to negotiate the restitution of properties to Jewish survivors or their heirs, to return works of art, and to restore community buildings to the remaining communities in what had once been great centers of Jewish life. It has not been easy. No one country took the initiative to give back properties to their rightful owners, but several international Jewish groups, including B’nai B’rith International, banded together to organize a central negotiating authority on restitution, the World Jewish Restitution Organization. Pressure did work, in some cases. Several governments did adopt restitution legislation in the 1990s, but most have been painfully slow in living up to both the letter and the spirit of the legislation. Some countries—almost 20 years since the fall of communism—have yet to adopt measures that would provide restitution or compensate survivors for their property losses. Most want nothing to do with the issue of “heirless property,” those properties for

which there are no claimants but the proceeds of which could give financial support to the many tiny Jewish communities that still dot the maps of the former communist countries on the European landmass. There have been some major international efforts to rectify the situation. A conference held at the State Department in December 1998, in which we participated, focused primarily on looted art and produced the Washington Principles, which have guided museums and others in the search for, and the restitution of, those cultural objects. Fortunately, the issue is back in the forefront. In June, I had the distinction to attend the Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague, where 46 countries and more than two dozen non-governmental organizations met to review what has transpired since the 1998 gathering, and to focus on all aspects of Holocaust assets issues. I was privileged to have served as an honorary member of the U.S. delegation, which was chaired by former Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat, who played a seminal role in the 1998 conference. We heard from, among others, famed author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel; renowned French lawyer and politician—and also a Holocaust survivor—Simone Veil; former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright; and one of the leading academic voices on the Holocaust, Prof. Yehuda Bauer of Hebrew University.

B’NAI B’RITH INTERNATIONAL

B’nai B’rith International President Moishe Smith led our delegation, which included Chairman of the Executive Dennis W. Glick, and Erika Van Gelder and Alex Faiman, representing B’nai B’rith Europe. The conference speakers named names: countries that have not yet begun the restitution process; countries that have begun such a process but have not implemented their own legislation; and others—the few—who have made good-faith efforts to do the right thing. Here’s what I said, in part, in my remarks to the plenary: “Tragically, there aren’t many ways left for justice to be served now, 60-plus years later. Of course, we can’t get back the 6 million who were murdered. Nor can we ever quantify the loss of their progeny. There is no compensation for human lives and all they might have accomplished. But property can, and must, be quantified. It is a difficult task, but that should only serve to fortify our commitment to doing it right… “The dark forces who would deny the Holocaust are growing, making it perhaps more important than ever to have full accountability through restitution … “There can be no more excuses. It is the ultimate test of democracy to recognize its historical flaws and address them. The time

to turn bromides into action is fleeting, and the time for action is now.” Restitution is not just about the return of properties and their value. It is very much about justice for the few who remain as survivors—witnesses to humankind’s worst hour—and their families. At the conclusion of the Prague conference, in a solemn ceremony at the Terezin concentration camp, all 49 countries present endorsed the Terezin Declaration. Contained in its six pages is a well-defined pathway to achieving a moral obligation to give back what was wrongfully taken. Ambassador J. Christian Kennedy, who heads up the U.S. State Department’s office for Holocaust issues, said at a meeting I attended in July that the Terezin Declaration “is a tool for concerted action. We need to try to find ways of turning this into practical action” on Holocaust assets restitution, return of looted art, and more. The Terezin Declaration in itself is just a document—one that is meant to provide some consolation to those who suffered and lost so very much. But it is a document that sets guidelines for the best practices necessary to right horrible wrongs. Let us hope the declaration is complied with while at least some of the victims are here to see it, and perhaps give the name “Terezin” additional significance in our history.

Photo courtesy of the Holocaust Era Assests Conference

International President Moishe Smith Honorary Presidents Gerald Kraft Seymour D. Reich Kent E. Schiner Tommy P. Baer Richard D. Heideman Joel S. Kaplan Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin Honorary Executive Vice President Dr. Sidney M. Clearfield Chairman of the Executive Dennis W. Glick Senior Vice Presidents John R. Rofel Seymour G. Saideman Harold I. Steinberg Jacobo Wolkowicz Treasurer Harold Shulman International Vice Presidents Pablo Sergio Grinstein Argentina Dr. Peter Schiff Australia and New Zealand Matilde Groisman Gus Brazil Rochelle Wilner Canada Hernán Fischman Chile, Bolivia, and Peru John Manheim Europe John P. Reeves Europe Arie Bar Zion Israel

B’nai B’rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin speaking at the Holocaust assets conference this summer in Prague as an honorary member of the U.S. delegation. The conference was attended by 46 countries and more than two dozen non-governmental organizations.

Leon Birbragher Northern Latin America and the Caribbean Daniel Mermelstein Uruguay and Paraguay

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These complicated times mean there’s a lot to mull over each day. From down the street, to across the nation, to around the world, the issues that impact your life are endless. We want to know what you think! The 2009

B’nai B’rith Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., scheduled for Dec. 6-8, is the place for you to speak your mind

on a broad range of 21st century concerns, and help shape B’nai B’rith’s views in this dynamic time, through discussions with B’nai B’rith members and supporters from near and far. Because the meeting is in the capital of the free world, we have access to a wide range of experts on these critical issues. The small-group setting affords you the opportunity to ask questions, form your own opinions, and help determine B’nai B’rith positions on key public policy issues. The Global Voice of the Jewish Community takes shape right here!

Our Issues LATIN AMERICA: The Iranian regime is trying to expand its influence in Latin America. How much should Latin America fear from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s attempts to establish a greater foothold in the region? Should the United States be concerned about Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez? How serious is the rise of anti-Semitism in the region? What does the coup in Honduras say about the future of democracy?

IRAN: There are few issues of more concern internationally than the global threat of Iran and its nuclear ambitions. Israel, Latin America, Europe, and the United States all face potential risk from Iran’s ever-more-bombastic leadership. Should Israel strike Iran first? What are the ramifications?

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Plus, attend the Washington premiere of “Eddie,” a play HEALTHCARE: The issue that stands front and center for the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration is healthcare. Is the system too broken to repair? Can we afford a major overhaul? Can we afford not to? What are the unique problems for seniors? Are there particular healthcare issues for Jews? ISRAEL: The challenges have rarely been greater for the Jewish state. Will the United States continue to be a reliable partner? Can there be an effective peace in the foreseeable future? What are the demographic challenges to Israel remaining a Jewish state? ENERGY: More and more our national security is tied to energy independence. B’nai B’rith is actively involved in the issue through a coalition called “Energy Alternatives for the 21st Century.” Find out what the group is doing. Do petrodollars help fund terrorists? Can the United States wean itself from foreign oil? How much does energy policy dictate foreign policy? These are among the issues we will be addressing with political leaders, policy specialists, media personalities, and B’nai B’rith experts. on, go to hotel informati r fo d n a e lin n or call To register o /policyconf.cfm rg .o th ri ib a n .org. .b www nce@bnaibrith re fe n co il a m e or 202-857-6530

exploring the make-or-break moment in the creation of the State of Israel. In a moving and inspirational production, see how B’nai B’rith played a vital role at a pivotal moment that could have meant life or death for the nascent state.

Just how incredible was President Harry S. Truman’s decision to recognize the Jewish state? We’ll talk with a noted historian after the play to get insight into what was at stake for the beleaguered president. And have an opportunity to pay tribute to our outgoing international president, Moishe Smith, and be witness to the beginning of the term of the 29th president of B’nai B’rith. All of this, plus a chance to catch up with old B’nai B’rith friends and make new ones. Of course you’ll see the presentation of the latest Label A. Katz Young Leadership Awards. Young professionals will have a chance to take part in the main events and enjoy some special programming just for them. Be in Washington for this exciting opportunity.

Why Should I attend this Policy Conference? Are you a member or supporter of B’nai B’rith? Have you contributed to a B’nai B’rith appeal to aid those in need or to further B’nai B’rith’s public policy and human rights advocacy work? Do you have expertise in or an interest in learning more about the most topical issues facing the world’s Jewish community? Do you enjoy seeing old friends and meeting new people? Networking and sharing ideas with others? Then Join Us for a rewarding experience!

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Dear Editor: The article on “Small-Town Jews,” in the summer 2009 issue, brought back memories of really small-town Jewish life, and the role B’nai B’rith played for me in that world. Almost 55 years ago, I lived in the mountains of southwest Virginia, far from any synagogue. In virtually each small town, there would be one to several Jewish families, usually merchants. We had, as our only communal focus, the Julius Fisher B’nai B’rith Lodge. Membership consisted of about 50 men, women, and children spread over 125 miles and three states (Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina). We met monthly, rotating between eight towns, in a restaurant or small hotel on Sundays. In the morning, the men and women would have their separate lodge meetings. We then had a “kosher-style” meal, followed by a minyan so we could celebrate yahrzeits and other religious customs. I could tell many stories about this close-knit, far-flung community, but one stands out. On a Friday afternoon, I walked the main street in Pulaski, Va., and came upon a small bakery. This alone was remarkable in the land of biscuits and Wonder Bread. Displayed in the window were several challahs. I went in and asked the clerk what kind of bread this was, and she said the owner, Max Trumpeter, called this “‘Charlie bread,’ but we call it ‘Jew bread.’” Trumpeter was a Holocaust survivor, and he came from generations of bakers. Having resettled in Pulaski, he did what his family had done for generations—bake challahs. Only now, the local farmers would come to town for Sunday shopping and buy all of Trumpeter’s Charlie bread. On Sundays, parents drove their kids 100 miles or more to temples in Roanoke, Va.; Winston-Salem, N.C.; or Bluefield, W.Va., for Sunday school. As these children grew and went to college, they did not return, and, as the parents retired and moved away, these tiny communities were left without their Jewish residents. I now live in Raleigh, N.C., a member of a small North Carolina mountain congregation, reliving the Jewish spirit that is more alive in the small communities written about in this article. Sincerely, Gerald H. Elkan, Raleigh, N.C.

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Pondering the Pomegranate By Janet Lubman Rathner

T

he newly ubiquitous pomegranate has been proclaimed the New Millennium’s wonder fruit. Consumption of its juice and seeds is heralded as a way to lower cholesterol, prevent cancers, and beautify bodies—even as a natural aphrodisiac. In Judaism, the qualities of this produceaisle darling are hardly revelations, and its significance is brought to fruition during the High Holiday season. “There are entire cookbooks devoted to pomegranates. This new pomegranate phase or craze really isn’t new; just here in America, because we Americans tend not to go out of our comfort zone,” says Louise Jacobsen Fisher, a certified chef and food historian in Potomac, Md. Fisher says pomegranates are the stuff of legends, particularly in Jewish culture. “It was the royalty of fruit for the early Jewish people. [Pomegranate likenesses] were on the hems of the cohanim’s [Jewish high priests’] robes, as Torah toppers, and on ancient tile work,” she says. “They also believed that all those seeds meant fertility. Maybe they even knew something back then about antioxidants.” The fruit’s pulpy seeds also are swathed in symbolism. According to lore, pomegranates contain exactly 613 seeds, mirroring the mitzvot Jews strive to follow. As one of the shivat haminim—the seven foods the Bible specifically associates with the land of Israel—pomegranates are among the feast items consumed on the second day of Rosh Hashanah.

Apple vs. Pomegranate There are some who believe that the pomegranate might have a more sinister place in ancient lore. When Eve passed the forbidden fruit unto Adam, was it indeed an apple—or a fruit with a more dubious history? Punica granatum, pomegranate’s scientific name, is Latin for “apple of Carthage.” Over the centuries, as the Bible went through

multiple translations—Aramaic to Hebrew, Hebrew to Greek, Greek to Latin, and, in the 14th century, Latin to English—“apple of Carthage” became associated with the Tree of Knowledge. Somewhere along the way, the phrase was abbreviated to “apple,” and the true definition faded. The fruit has been immortalized in masterpieces such as Leonardo da Vinci’s “Madonna and Child with a Pomegranate,” William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” and John Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” These same poets and artists of the 14th century painted and wrote of Eve, at the prodding of the serpent, passing on an “apple” to Adam. “The Renaissance artists—they knew of apple trees. That’s what littered the countryside, not pomegranates,” Fisher says in speculating on how the pomegranate/apple switch might have come about. Geographically speaking, she says, it makes more sense that the pomegranate was the forbidden fruit. “In the Tigris and Euphrates valley, there are pomegranate trees; not apples,” Fisher says. She’s not the only one debunking the apple myth. “My educated guess is it probably wasn’t an apple,” agrees Rabbi Simcha Backman, director of the Jewish resource website AskMoses.com. However, Backman also says that, while the pomegranate has “a prominent and symbolic role” in Judaism, this neither confirms nor dismisses it in the Adam and Eve saga. And he says resolution is not essential. “The fruit is secondary. The lessons of the story are what are important. This was the first time humanity erred, and God made it an opportunity to turn it into something good.”

Rabbi Burton Visotzky, Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, says many rabbis share the opinion that the etrog is responsible for Adam and Eve’s ouster from the Garden of Eden. “It looks sweet and smells good on the outside, and yet, if you bite into it, it’s bitter. It’s a wonderful symbol, rather than historic reality, of what happens when you sin.” But the etrog also has competition. Visotzky says there are plausible arguments that grapes, figs, nuts, wheat, even hearts of palm are deserving of the “forbidden” title. “It depends [in which season the story of Adam and Eve is taught].” Visotzky endorses none of the fruits. However, he does offer further explanation for pomegranate consumption on the second day of Rosh Hashanah: “That’s when we like to say a Shehecheyanu [prayer for special occasions]. It’s nicer to say it on a new fruit, and pomegranates are just becoming ripe. Also, it’s Tishrei and, with Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Succoth—so many mitzvot.” The rabbis say: “Just as the pomegranate is full of seeds, so, too, is Tishrei full of mitzvot.” So this High Holy Day season, know that pomegranates have been deemed panaceas for both physical and spiritual health, and enjoy.

B’Nai B’rith 11

Poverty in Jews Are Photo by iStockphoto

12 Fall 2009

F

rom a ground-floor facility located on a busy commercial thoroughfare in the predominantly Hasidic neighborhood of Brooklyn’s Borough Park, Alexander Rapaport has a front-row view of some of the uglier snapshots of Jewish life in America. “I have seen horrific scenes—people picking food from Dumpsters, people picking up bread from the ground that was [meant] for birds,” says Rapaport, executive director of Masbia, New York City’s only free full-service kosher soup kitchen. Venture inside and any doubts about the need for places like Masbia are put to rest. It’s packed. When Masbia opened in 2005, volunteers served an average of eight meals an evening, primarily to men on their way to and from shul. Today, the number of nightly diners has grown to more than 200. That number also spans a wider demographic. “In May, we bought highchairs for the first time. The other night, we had 60 kids in here,” says Rapaport. “It’s fulfilling to help, but it tears you apart. It is painful [to see that] this exists. My mashgiach [kosher monitor] said, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’” It’s no secret that poverty exists in the United States and that it has been exacerbated by the nation’s recent economic turmoil. According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics, more than 37 million Americans do not have enough money to take care of the basics—food, clothing, and housing.

What might come as a surprise is how many Jews are among the struggling. According to the 2001 Jewish Population Survey (the latest complete numbers available), approximately 7 percent of the American Jewish community lives below federal poverty lines—a family of four making $22,050 or less—while more than 14 percent hovers precipitously close. This translates to more than 700,000 Jews, including 190,000 who are children. But anecdotal evidence—for instance, three more Masbia soup kitchens are in the works— and an increase throughout the United States in those asking for help indicate that the number has surged. “Given the increased demand for services that agencies throughout Philadelphia and across the country have experienced over the past year, there is no question that the number of American Jews living at or below the federal poverty line is far greater than in 2001,” says Amy Krulik, executive director of the Jewish Relief Agency (JRA), which operates in the Philadelphia area. “The unemployment caused by the economic downturn has pushed many families to and over the financial brink who never expected to find themselves in this position.” Krulik offers this anecdote, showing that help is sometimes needed where least expected: “What we are hearing from the volunteers sometimes is, ‘I went to this house and it’s nicer than mine.’ I’ll say, ‘OK, things are not always as they seem. This is a family in need. They need our help.’”

America: Not Exempt By Janet Lubman Rathner

B’Nai B’rith 13

Categories of Jewish Poor

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According to Rachel Wizenfeld, communications coordinator at New York City’s Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, there are generally three groups of Jews who are in need of help: working families who live near the poverty line; immigrants—mostly older—from the former Soviet Union, Israel, and elsewhere who have language, education, and other barriers to financial health; and seniors, including Holocaust survivors, widows, and widowers, who can no longer afford their homes and other living expenses. B’nai B’rith International has long been aware of the necessity to help with the lodging needs of the senior population and is the largest sponsor of federally subsidized housing for the elderly in the United States. For more than 30 years, in a cooperative partnership with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, B’nai B’rith has made rental apartments available to senior citizens with limited incomes regardless of race or ethnic origin. In New York, the Metropolitan Council was created in the early 1970s to coordinate the human-service efforts of Jewish community councils throughout the city. It does not turn away anyone in need, but its primary focus is the more than 300,000 Jews—that amounts to 1 out of every 5—who live at or below the federal poverty level in the Big Apple. Through its Kosher Pantry, the Metropolitan Council distributes monthly food packages—4.5 million pounds of grocery staples—to 13,000 Jewish families, as well as vouchers for 2,000 families to purchase perishable items. Wizenfeld’s description of her organization’s clientele mirrors what Jewish relief agencies

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‘The unemployment caused by the economic downturn has pushed many families to and over the financial brink who never expected to find themselves in this position,’ says Jewish Relief Agency Executive Director Amy Krulik.

around the country are noting—including a disturbing new trend. “Because of the recession and mass layoffs, we are seeing well-educated professionals who are out of work and are unfamiliar with reaching out for help, even as their mortgages [or] rents keep coming and their savings evaporate,” Wizenfeld says. She expects the situation to become even more grim in the weeks and months ahead as more jobs are lost, the first recipients of unemployment benefits exhaust their government assistance, and savings are depleted. “We saw a glimpse of this during Passover, when nearly all of our local community councils ran out of food because of the huge need,” Wizenfeld says. “Also, many of the working professionals who have lost jobs are in denial about their state of financial affairs, and are slow and uncomfortable with reaching out for help. Therefore, we believe that many more people will be coming to our doors in the next months, seeking aid.”

The Jewish Working Poor Fern and Russell Klein are emblematic of this new group. A special education teacher in Philadelphia until stricken with ovarian cancer, Fern, 47, has been on disability for the last seven years. Russell, 63, is a school music teacher who bolsters the family’s income—reduced by the loss of Fern’s paycheck—by giving private lessons. Even when their son became ill with Lyme disease, incurring $40,000 in medical expenses not covered by insurance, the Kleins managed to stay afloat by living frugally. Then, last year, Russell suffered a stroke and was out of work for six months. He has since recovered and returned to teaching, but the family has lost its financial footing. Their home, a simple rowhouse purchased 16 years ago, is headed for foreclosure. Today, they rely on the Jewish Relief Agency and other public pantries to put food on the table. “At first I felt horrible. Not being able to provide food for the family is very hard. I never thought we’d have to resort to this,” says Fern. “Both my husband and I have master’s [degrees] in education. We don’t live beyond our means, but we have become the working poor.” Fern says the JRA, which receives funding though the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, family foundations, banks, businesses, and individual donations, is a godsend during difficult times. “Once a month, they deliver the food in a box: tuna, pasta, canned vegetables—a lot of staples. Great stuff. It really helps, and they deliver it

The Helping Hand of B’nai B’rith

By Janet Lubman Rathner

Project H.O.P.E. — Helping Our People Everywhere — is a community action project whose major goal is the collection and distribution of food packages to poor and elderly Jews during Passover. Many Jews who cannot afford special holiday foods depend on B’nai B’rith members to provide matzoh and other Passover staples.

B

’nai B’rith’s involvement in community service aimed at helping the poor and struggling—regardless of religious background—predates the current recession. For the past 17 years, hundreds of needy residents in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys have been stretching food dollars by taking advantage of assorted free breads, rolls, and bagels courtesy of the Bagel Brigade, a project of the B’nai B’rith Greater San Fernando Valley Unit. Each morning, seven days a week, while most of Los Angeles sleeps, between 50 and 75 volunteers from B’nai B’rith and elsewhere troll grocery stores and bakeries for day-old bread products that would otherwise be thrown out. By 7 a.m., the morning’s haul is set up at a Costco parking lot where representatives from food pantries, shelters, and schools serving impoverished neighborhoods line up for the pickings. Volunteers also deliver directly to the doors of other relief centers. Herman Berman, a longtime member of Greater San Fernando Valley, started the Bagel Brigade after he retired from the jewelry business. The B’nai B’rith unit was already arranging dispersal of manufacturers’ excess frozen food products to the needy. Berman had time to spare and wanted to expand the lodge’s community service efforts. Initially, “we’d get one or two truckloads. You can’t meet much of the need with that,” Berman says. He approached several markets with the idea of leaving a basket with a sign asking for bread-product contributions. “I went back the next day and the baskets were full,” Berman recalls. “I thought, ‘If we’re going to markets anyway, why not ask for the day-old baked goods that they’re taking off the displays?’” The Bagel Brigade was a resounding success, but Berman wanted to expand the effort yet again. Five years ago, B’nai B’rith Greater San Fernando Valley began collecting old cell phones for sale to a manufacturer for refurbishment. The endeavor brings the Bagel Brigade anywhere from $200 to $400 a month, which goes to purchasing cereal in bulk.

The Helping Hand of B’nai B’rith,

continued on pg. 17

B’Nai B’rith 15

through the doors at Yad Ezra. “There are familiar faces. They say, ‘Never did I think this would be happening to us,’” Nancy Braun says. “We’re fortunate to keep everything going in our life, but I can sympathize. I see all of these people losing homes and stores closing. “In our own B’nai B’rith chapter, people can’t do everything they want to do. They have to pick and choose. I could be sitting around caught up in my own misery, but volunteer at a place like Yad Ezra, and you realize somebody has it worse. I can still go to a grocery store and buy food for my family.” In Kansas City, a consortium of Jewish organizations recently arranged for nationally renowned financial counselor Neale Godfrey to come and share insights with the community’s cash-strapped Jewish families. “It was for everything, all the way down to nitty-gritty issues like how to tell the kids, ‘We can’t take a vacation this year.’ This is not something we’d be bringing into the community in ordinary times,” says Rabbi Scott White of Congregation Ohev Sholom, a Conservative synagogue in the Kansas City suburb of Prairie Village. One indication of the way the economy is affecting Jewish communities, as well as individuals, is that Ohev Sholom recently canceled KosherFest, its popular outdoor fundraiser, which featured member-contributed comfort foods—chopped liver, noodle kugel, stuffed cabbage—and was responsible for 10 percent of the budget at the 180-family synagogue. White says there was no money to cover tent rentals, a necessity in the event of uncooperative weather.

Photo courtesy of Masbia

with dignity. They don’t make us feel like we’re begging for it.” JRA food costs run about $20 a box; operating expenses are just under $1 million per year. The Kleins try to give back by joining the 700 to 900 volunteers arriving at the agency’s warehouse one Sunday morning a month to pack boxes, load cars, and deliver goods to 2,500 needy Jewish families. “It makes us feel like we’re helping them,” Fern says. At Jewish relief agencies around the country, it is not unusual to find volunteers who, in previous years, might have also written a check, but today find themselves in circumstances that makes donating money difficult. Every month, Nancy Braun, 64, joins other members from the B’nai B’rith Great Lakes Region who have been helping out at the Yad Ezra kosher food bank—where demand for its services has increased by 35 percent in the last two years—in the Detroit suburb of Berkley. Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the country: 12.6 percent, according to the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report, which was released in March. Braun is in this group: She lost her job as a patient-care coordinator more than a year ago. “I’m unemployed. It’s unbelievable to me,” says Braun. Braun’s husband, Bill, 70, also a member of the Great Lakes Region, is retired from the direct-mail business. Today, he supplements family finances by working as a courier. The Brauns manage despite the loss of Nancy’s income and count themselves among the lucky, particularly when they see who is coming

At Jewish relief agencies, it is not unusual to find volunteers who, in previous years, might have also written a check, but today find themselves in circumstances that makes donating money difficult.

“The way we made our funding off it was not only people coming and eating, but [our] asking for sponsorship from philanthropic funders to underwrite our basic costs. We know they don’t have the income to give to a project like this,” says White. The shortfall coincides with an uptick in calls for assistance from within Ohev Sholom. These days, White is dipping into his discretionary fund to help cover congregants’ mortgage payments, rent, and utility bills. The surge in requests came as both SprintNextel, based in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, and a nearby General Motors assembly Jewish Poverty, continued on pg. 19

The following are B’nai B’rith entities and Jewish relief organizations contacted for these two stories: B’nai B’rith Great Lakes Region: greatlakes@bnaibrith.org B’nai B’rith Greater Florida Region: Universal Thrift Store: 888-626-6580 (Ask for Carol Morgan) For information regarding Project H.O.P.E., the B’nai B’rith Bagel Brigade, and Schlep Sunday: cca@bnaibrith.org Masbia Soup Kitchen: www.masbia.org 16 Fall 2009

Jewish Relief Agency: www.jewishrelief.org Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty: www.metcouncil.org Yad Ezra kosher food bank: www.yadezra.org Jewish Federation of Greater Washington: www.shalomdc.org -- Warm Line: (866) 950-4AID (4243) SOVA - A Service of Jewish Family Services of Los Angeles: www.jfsla.org

The Helping Hand of B’nai B’rith, continued from pg. 15

need,” Gardner says. “What is sitting in the corner of your closet could be useful to someone else.”

“It’s amazing, the number of people who look forward to our deliveries,” says Berman. Among that group is SOVA, a program of Jewish Family Services of Los Angeles. SOVA operates three food pantries and three resource centers that serve more than 7,000 people a month. “We rely on the Bagel Brigade for our bread,” says Joan Mithers, SOVA’s director. “Demand is up well over 40 percent from a year ago.”

A B’nai B’rith Holiday Niche

Rummaging for Cash

B’nai B’rith has one Jewish- and holiday-specific program: Project H.O.P.E.—Helping Our People Everywhere—is a community-action project whose major goal is the collection and distribution of food packages to poor and elderly Jews during Passover. Many Jews who cannot afford special holiday foods depend on B’nai B’rith members to provide matzoh and the other Passover staples. The project works with community family-service agencies and local Jewish social services, and with B’nai B’rith members and synagogue volunteers. Jewish organizations provide the lists of people who need packages and the facilities for collecting, storing, and packing the food. B’nai B’rith volunteers assemble and deliver the packages. Begun in New York, the program has spread to Boston, Philadelphia, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. “Our dedicated volunteers come back each year to participate, and look at this project as another example of our mission to do Tikkun Olam, good deeds that repair the world,” said Rhonda Love, director of the Center for Community Action. To get involved in Project H.O.P.E. or other B’nai B’rith charitable activities, contact the Center for Community Action at 212-4903290 or e-mail cca@bnaibrith.org, or see the box on page 16.

In low-income Opa-locka, Fla., Carol Morgan, a member of the B’nai B’rith Greater Florida Region, runs the Universal Thrift Store, which sells discounted furniture, clothing, kitchen appliances, jewelry, and the occasional car or boat to financially strapped families. The items are donated by B’nai B’rith members and others in the community. Morgan opened the store seven years ago with her husband David, who has since died. “B’nai B’rith was looking for ways to generate funds. As we had been in the business in New Jersey [the couple lived there until retiring], we explained what they could do,” Morgan says. “Today, we have two trucks on the road doing free monthly pickups from West Palm Beach to Miami.” Universal Thrift is a success in more ways than one. In addition to affordable merchandise—a sofa for $69, a man’s suit for $12.95— the store offers employment opportunities for low-income residents and ex-convicts on work release. Universal Thrift also serves as a reliable fundraiser for its parent organization. “To date, I believe we have raised $300,000 for B’nai B’rith,” Morgan says. While the economic downturn has not changed business—Morgan says she hasn’t noticed any change in who comes in to shop—there is a difference in what is being donated. This, in turn, affects what Universal Thrift raises for B’nai B’rith, Morgan says. “There are changes in the pickups. People are holding onto things longer. We haven’t had a car donated all year,” Morgan says. “We want 12 Days / 11 Nights aboard Daily Prayer Services Conducted by to make enough for B’nai B’rith and still serve the New Celebrity Equinox our Rabbi and Cantor the community.” Gourmet Kosher Cuisine freshly Lectures and Special Events led by our In Houston, B’nai B’rith member Ed Gardner prepared by 5-Star Chefs served Scholar in Residence, Rabbi, and Cantor oversees Schlep Sunday, an annual collecon our own china tion of clothing and household items that Kashruth under the supervision of Shipboard Gratuities: Cabin Attendant, takes place on the first Sunday in January. The our Rabbi (traditional Conservative supervision) Waiter, Assistant Waiter, and Maitre’d donated goods go to a local charity. Port Charges, Taxes, and Government Two Private Seders Schlep Sunday has been of particular impor(ceremonial wines included at Seders) Fees Included tance in recent years as Houston has absorbed a significant population requiring assistance. “With Hurricane Katrina and with the www.PassoverKosherCruises.com economy, we’ve had an influx of people in For more information contact: info@passoverkoshercruises.com

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Jewish Poverty, continued from pg. 16 plant implemented substantial layoffs. This, in turn, has an impact on every other business in Kansas City and its surrounding communities. “In the past, there were people we could go to to get nice, four-figure contributions… but no one is exempt,” says White. “We’ve been looking at ways to replace our food festival with something else. We haven’t come up with an answer yet.”

Sacrificing for the Whole After observing a significant increase in calls for financial assistance, transportation, and kosher meals, and a tripling of requests for vocational counseling beginning in fall 2008, the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington (D.C.) formed a Community Crisis Assistance Fund with $300,000 from its own reserves. The federation also established Warm Line, a hotline that people can call to be directed to the relevant constituent agency. “We came up with three categories of need,” explains Misha Galperin, executive vice president of the Rockville, Md.-based federation. “The first is the safety net: food, housing, and medical assistance. The second

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level: counseling needs that arise out of economic crisis—employment, mental health, and domestic abuse, where we always see a spike when the economic situation worsens. The third level: scholarships for day schools, nursery schools, camps, and other deficits the agencies and schools in our system develop because they lose grants.” However, to maintain allocations at previous levels, more—and painful—measures had to be taken at the federation itself, Galperin says. “We were $2.5 million short, and we anticipated things were going to continue to be difficult, and we needed to…signal the community that we were taking heed. We retrenched about 10 percent of our staff, from the managing director down,” he says. “Senior staff, myself included, took voluntary pay cuts; we cut contributions to our pension plan for people under the age of 55; we initiated staff furloughs; and we cut expenses [in] food and travel.” The federation then approached its major donor families, most of whom have suffered financial losses in the market, and asked them to open their wallets. Again. By April, the shortfall had been met. Galperin says

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such gratifying response is typical from within the Jewish community as a whole and reason to believe that the needs of struggling and impoverished Jews will continue to be met, regardless of the growing numbers; regardless of the times. “They [members of the community] understand there are others who have less and they have come through. This is basically the Jewish concept of being responsible for one another,” Galperin says. “The wealth in the Jewish community has been affected in a permanent way. There are some estimates that between 30 and 40 percent [of the wealth]…including foundations and endowments, has disappeared. “But if people understand what is going on and do what is right, we’ll get through this and come out stronger. I’m very optimistic that will happen,” he says. B’nai B’rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin concurs: “Organizations focusing on poverty are also facing problems of their own, as fundraising for those programs is down because giving is down. “There have to be creative solutions until the giving flow increases to where it’s been. Lack of funding doesn’t lessen the need, or the community’s obligation to react.”

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Ceremony in honor of Righteous Among the Nations in the Garden of the Righteous. Photos courtesy of Yad Vashem

The Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations. Photos courtesy of Yad Vashem

Giving Righteous By Janet Lubman Rathner

H

e is a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust. In 1943, William Donat, then known as Wlodek Grynberg, was a frightened five-year-old whose parents managed to have him spirited away from all-butassured death. She was a Polish-Catholic teenager who joined the resistance at the onset of World War II. Employing her superb cross-country skiing skills, 17-year-old Magdalena Rusinek guided Polish pilots over the mountains so they could escape to Britain and fly for the Royal Air Force. She also hid Jewish children; little Wlodek was one of them. The child spent a week sequestered in an empty apartment; Rusinek brought him food, toys, and consolation. She also provided a crash course in Christian prayers and customs to camouflage his Jewish background. The following week, Wlodek was placed in a Catholic orphanage. Versed in catechisms and the scripture of Saint Peter, the little boy was able to stay safe by keeping his Judaism 20 Fall 2009

under wraps. His parents, meanwhile, were routed through a litany of concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, and Dachau. Reunited at war’s end, the Grynbergs, who adopted the name “Donat” in the camps, immigrated to the United States and began a new life. William Donat grew up in New York City and went on to a successful career in book publishing and graphic arts. Today, Donat resides in the New York City suburb of Purchase. He is married, a father of three, and a grandparent of six. Comfortably retired at 71, he is active in Holocaust education efforts. Donat participated in editing the 1999 edition of “The Holocaust Kingdom,” a memoir first written by his father, Alexander, in 1965; the latest version was published by the U.S. Holocaust Museum. Donat also frequently lectures at temples, churches, high schools, and colleges about his childhood in Poland, religious tolerance, and 20th-century immigration to the

United States, including his own experiences as a refugee. “I have had an interesting and diverse life,” Donat says. But through all the years he built his comfortable life, he was plagued by a nagging question: What happened to the young girl who, “at the very risk of her life, [saved] a Jewish child from being found by the Gestapo?” “She [would be] a living confirmation of a story that even I occasionally had doubted,” Donat says in explaining his incessant need to know. And then, two years ago, during a convention of child Holocaust survivors, he learned that the rescuer he knew as “Magda” was alive in Warsaw. With his wife, Ellen, Donat traveled to Poland to thank her. They hadn’t seen each other in 65 years. “It was thrilling for me to see her,” he recalls. Rusinek, whose family name is now Groddzka-Guzkowska feels similarly. “I was simply delighted, first to see that he

Righteous Among the Nations Magdalena GroddzkaGuzkowska and survivor William Donat during the unveiling of her name on the wall in the Garden of the Righteous. Photo courtesy of Bill Donat

Gentiles Their Due had indeed survived [of the six children she hid over the course of the war, Donat is the only one with whom she has reconnected], then to find out about his family. It proved that we had really done something good,” she says, responding through Donat to an interview request from B’nai B’rith Magazine. For Donat, the reunion in GroddzkaGuzkowska’s small apartment proved to be insufficient acknowledgement of her efforts, so he set about having her recognized by Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem-based Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority. In January, the woman he had known as a vibrant teenager—now a retired therapist for autistic children, and a frail 84—joined the Righteous Among the Nations. She is among a small group of gentiles who, with nothing to gain and everything to lose, made the decision to save Jews during the Holocaust. “I am here today to repay a debt that has been outstanding for a long time,” Donat said during the ceremony at Yad Vashem.

“You are a very special person; unfortunately, there were just not enough people like you to save the million Jewish children who perished during the Holocaust.”

Who Are the Righteous? The Righteous Among the Nations—also known as “Righteous Gentiles”—each receive a medal, a certificate of honor, and their names inscribed on the Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. As of 2008, approximately 23,000 individuals from 44 countries have been recognized. The dangers these individuals skirted throughout the Holocaust were significant. In German-occupied Poland, for example, all household members faced death for not only hiding a Jew in their home, but also for giving any Jew food or water. Who would take such a chance? “There is no profile,” says Irena Steinfeldt, director of Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations Department. “You find all nationalities, all denominations: Christians,

Muslims; educated people, the totally illiterate; all professions: policemen, zoo directors, even petty criminals.” Not every non-Jew who saved a Jew is eligible for Yad Vashem’s “Righteous” designation. “It has to be an act that is motivated by the wish to [specifically] save Jews, and we need to have documentation: testimony by the survivor, or in some cases, hearsay, but with substantiation, not according to a book or an article. Every request we examine and research,” Steinfeldt says. Between 400 and 500 names are added every year, while “another 50 or so are rejected because there is not enough documentation, or because there was no risk, or because the motivation seems to be different,” she says. Exclusions include saving Jews when it was part of a job, such as issuing visas when that was still allowed, or accepting any kind of compensation in exchange for the risk. “We will say he is a rescuer, that he helped B’Nai B’rith 21

the Jews, and we admire him, but he is not recognized [as among the Righteous],” Steinfeldt explains. Once in a very great while, ongoing research determines that someone honored with the designation turns out not to have been so righteous after all. “In one case, a woman came forward and said, ‘He did rescue these Jews, but he extorted sexual favors,’ which is something, of course, that not everybody knew,” Steinfeldt says. “The Jews [who nominated him] didn’t know that there was one [among them] who was paying the price.” The man’s name was removed from the Wall of Honor. Steinfeldt says the world will never know how many Jews owe their lives to acts of the Righteous, but the number is substantial. “It would probably be tens of thousands, perhaps more,” she says.

Others Hear the Call The Yad Vashem mission is complemented by the acts of other groups that, after

obtaining the names of the Righteous, seek to ensure that the basic needs of these individuals are being met. In Israel, Avodot Tzdaka U’Mishpat or Justice Works (ATZUM), an organization dedicated to the promotion of social justice, provides financial assistance and assorted support to 44 of the Righteous and their spouses who live in the Jewish state. In recent years, ATZUM was instrumental in having a ramp installed at an apartment building so a wheelchair-bound rescuer who sheltered a Jewish toddler can now spend her mornings enjoying the sunshine. The organization also footed the bill for a convalescent home when another infirm rescuer—having broken her arm—

needed 24-hour care. On a worldwide scale, the New Yorkbased Jewish Foundation for the Righteous [JFR] has, since 1986, with funding provided through the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or Claims Conference, administered financial support to 1,400 Righteous. Included in this group is a Dutch rescuer who shot and killed the Nazi who stumbled upon the Jews she had hidden beneath the floorboards of a home. “I was not saved by Righteous Gentiles, but I was in the war and I know…for saving a Jew, the gentile risked his life,” says Roman Kent, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, who is JFR’s president and

The dangers these individuals skirted throughout the Holocaust were significant. In German-occupied Poland, for example, all household members faced death for not only hiding a Jew in their home, but also for giving any Jew food or water.

Read the Hilarious New Book on the Trials and Tribulations of Merging Two Families In the introduction to Inlaws and Other UFOs, Robert Taylor writes about what happens when your children tell you they are about to marry and you confront a new entity: Inlaws! “Inlaws and the issues they bring with them are a very real part of life when two families are united in marriage. I take a humorous look at the trials and tribulations of merging families, particularly for the parents of the husband and wife-to-be. “I take the reader through the engagement, the planning of the wedding, and the day of the main event. You might fit yourself into the different situations smiling because you’ve either experienced the chapter in the book or someday you might be involved with Inlaws and Other UFOs.” From the author:

As a B’nai B’rith member for many years, growing up in Passaic, New Jersey, I ask you to stop a minute, sit down in your easy chair, relax, and pick up this humorous book. You won’t be able to put it down. A happy and healthy New Year to all.

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Fore more information: Yad Vashem and the Righteous Among the Nations Program: www.yadvashem.org To apply: www1.yadvashem.org/righteous_new/how_to_apply.html Jewish Foundation for the Righteous: www.jfr.org

one of the organization’s speakers. “This is my way…of doing something. I think that they deserve this. “These are not young righteous gentiles, they are old; 99.9 percent of them are not only old but they are sick and they are poor. So we at the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous are sending them a monthly stipend.” With the number of living witnesses to the Holocaust shrinking, and generations increasingly unaware of its magnitude,

acknowledging the individuals who chose not to be bystanders is more important than ever, say those who have made it their mission never to forget. “This is a continual, eternal opportunity to teach about the Holocaust, and to a very important chapter of that story that speaks of human decency and courage,” says Daniel S. Mariaschin, executive vice president of B’nai B’rith International. “It carries tremendous weight now and

perhaps [will] even more once there are no more survivors.” Donat agrees. “They should be recognized as heroes. They should know that the Jewish people shall remember them. We should continue to add to the list of the Righteous, even if they have died, so that future generations will know that, in the time of our greatest peril, there were those who risked their own lives to help their Jewish neighbors.” Of his own rescuer, Donat says: “There is no question that, had Magda been caught with me, she would have shared the fate of a Jewish child: the gas chamber.” Groddzka-Guzkowska says she never had a moment’s hesitation. “It was a very natural thing to do, to save children from the savage Germans,” she says. And of her newly acquired Righteous Among the Nations designation? “I am pleased that it occurred during my lifetime,” Groddzka-Guzkowska says. “It is always satisfying when one’s good deeds are recognized, even if it takes a while.”

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B’Nai B’rith 23

Discover Jewish Culture and History Around the World! Join us as we meet with local B’nai B’rith, Jewish and government leaders. La Habana, Cuba

Cuba Missions

Dec 9-17, 2009; March 3-11, 2010 June 2-10, 2010

Meet Jewish leaders and learn the history of the Jewish community in Cuba. Talk to people first-hand, bring needed supplies, and learn about their projects. Tour synagogues and Jewish community centers in Havana, Santa Clara, and Cienfuegos. Other special missions to Santiago, Camaguey, and Guantanamo can be scheduled. Also visit cultural, historic, and educational sites.

B’nai B’rith Celebrating Israel at 62 February 10-21, 2010

Explore this magical country and immerse yourself in the heart and soul of Israel. Designed for both first-timers and those who have toured Israel before. This unique tour will feature sights that you have not seen before. Visit Jerusalem’s memorable historical and religious sites. Experience the Dead Sea, Masada, Akko, and Caesarea. Explore the holy city of Safed; the Bahai Temple and Gardens in Haifa; the Golan Heights; and excavations at Davidson Center Archaeological Park and Beit Shean.

Wailing Wall, Israel

Red Square, Russia

B’nai B’rith Exploring the Jewels of Jewish Russia May 25-June 3, 2010

Get acquainted with Jewish life, culture, and history in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Visit the Kremlin and Red Square. Visit the Moscow Choral Synagogue and other Jewish sites. Explore the Tretyakov Gallery and Novodevichy Museum. Guided tour of world famous Hermitage Museum and estates of Pushkin and Pavlovsk. Visit historic Yusupov Palace and other landmarks.

B’nai B’rith Berlin & Prague — a Jewish Perspective Bridge Town Ariel, Praque ger, Brandenbur Berlin

October 10-19, 2010

Visit these imperial cities of central Europe: the vibrant and colorful city of Prague; and Berlin, which is a blend of historic and modern. Historic sites in Berlin include Potsdam, Wannsee, and Reichstag. Visit the Jewish Museum and Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. In Prague, explore the Jewish Museum complex and tour Terezin. These image files are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License

SpOnSOred By B’naI B’rITh InTernaTIOnal: The GlOBal VOIce OF The JewISh cOMMunITy and B’naI B’rITh canada 2009/2010 MISSIOnS and TraVel Tours Arranged By

24 Fall 2009

For more information, contact the B’nai B’rith International Mission and Travel Office at 877-222-9590 or visit www.bnaibrith.org and click on Missions and Travel.

Tel Aviv at 100 Cosmopolitan Life in a Danger Zone

I

It’s after 5 p.m. on a Thursday in early summer, and the North Tel Aviv train station is crammed with harried commuters, mostly going home to points north: Herzliya, Caesarea, Binyamina, Haifa. Traffic on the 10-lane Ayalon highway that runs parallel to the train station has slowed to a crawl. In the towering skyscrapers that flank the Ayalon, lawyers, media executives, and financial managers frantically try to squeeze another few hours out of the day. Across town along the beach, an after-work crowd settles in. Along the boardwalk, joggers dodge baby carriages, bicycles, and little children on scooters. Blocks away, the city is teeming with crowded coffee shops and restaurants, theaters and concert venues, shopping malls, and public parks. Fashionably dressed women walk their dogs, scruffy 30-somethings sip espressos, and elderly women out for late-afternoon strolls chat with their Filipino aides. Sans the language, the location, and the particularities of Israeli culture, Tel Aviv could be any large world city— New York, Amsterdam, Barcelona. This, say many who live here, is the essence—both pro and con—of Tel Aviv. One hundred years since Tel Aviv’s founding as what is widely known as the first Hebrew city, what makes it unique on the Israeli landscape is its normality and vitality

By Uriel Heilman in a country wracked by constant conflict and division. “For people who don’t know Israel, they only think of Jerusalem and the occupied territories; they don’t see that Israel can be something else,” says Leslie Palti, a French national married to a Jerusalemite. “Tel Aviv is a city like in any other developed country. But people from the outside don’t see that. ” Founded on the sand dunes outside the old port city of Jaffa by a few Jewish families in April 1909, Tel Aviv— long the headquarters of B’nai B’rith Israel—has grown from a settlement of newly arrived European immigrants to become the anchor of Israel’s biggest metropolitan area, the Jewish state’s economic engine, and the country’s cultural mecca. But is Tel Aviv’s cosmopolitan hustle and bustle a true representation of life in the Jewish state?

The Jerusalem-Tel Aviv Debate There’s a long-running dispute among Israelis about which of Israel’s two largest cities better represents Israel’s true face: Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

Photo by Getty Images

B’Nai B’rith 25

Cafe on Sheinkin Street in Tel Aviv. Photo by Corbis.

Israelis think of as Israeli than Jerusalem is.” But Yuval Turm, a physician from Shoresh, a suburb of Jerusalem, says Tel Aviv is not the real Israel. “Jerusalem is really a balagan,” Turm says, using the Hebrew word for hullabaloo. “Tel Aviv is more ordered. It looks more like a European city. It’s not really Israeli.”

The City’s Critics

One is a symbol of the historical and religious yearning of the Jewish people, the country’s political capital, and a microcosm of the state’s divisions: religious and secular, Arab and Jewish, rich and poor. The other has comparatively little historical baggage, looks more like Mediterranean Europe than the Middle East, prizes secular culture and liberalism more than it does tradition and religion, and is the country’s cultural capital. Sha’anan Street, founder and lead singer of the popular Israeli hip-hop band Hadag Nahash, sings about being pulled between these twin poles of Israeli society in the hit song “Hine Ani Ba” (“Here I Come”). “Jerusalem’s a great city,” Street croons. “Walking on the street feels like the ingathering of the exiles, a thousand cultures.” But then he grows disenchanted: “It’s gray, there’s no beach” and packs up for the bright lights of Tel Aviv. At first he finds that “everything’s fresh, and that’s good,” but “after two years of Sodom and Gomorrah,” he yearns to return to Jerusalem. In an interview with B’nai B’rith Magazine, Street, who lives in Jerusalem, says Tel Aviv unquestionably is the symbol of Israel and of being Israeli today. “Jerusalem expresses the Middle East, the people who live in the Middle East, and the religions that exist in the Middle East—and the appeasement and conflict between all the elements that live here,” Street says. “But Tel Aviv is the most Hebrew city that exists here. Tel Aviv is the expression of the dreams of most of the people who live in

26 Fall 2009

Israel. They dream of making it big in Tel Aviv, of being successful in Tel Aviv.” Two recent public demonstrations on back-to-back weekends epitomize the differences between the two cities. When Tel Aviv held its annual gay pride parade in mid-June, Mayor Ron Huldai was at the center of the celebration, which drew thousands of party-goers and culminated in the mayor’s presiding over a sunset wedding on the city’s Gordon Beach for five gay couples. “The weddings were not official; Israel does not recognize gay marriage,” Huldai says. A week earlier, Jerusalem also saw thousands take to the streets—for a rally that drew scores of haredi Orthodox Israelis protesting because a parking lot in the Old City was open on the Sabbath. The demonstration, which Israeli media described as a riot, prompted the city’s police chief to ask Mayor Nir Barkat to close the parking garage for the next two Saturdays, until a plan for keeping the peace could be put in place. Barkat agreed. The different crowds on back-to-back weekends in Israel’s two largest cities represent the gulf between 3,000-year-old Jerusalem and 100-year-old Tel Aviv, even though they are a 50-minute car ride apart. “I used to say: If I live in Israel, I want to live in Jerusalem—or on a kibbutz or a moshav; there’s no reason to live in Tel Aviv, which after all aspires to be New York or London,” says Oren Harman, a scion of one of Jerusalem’s prominent families. “I was wrong. Tel Aviv is a lot closer to what

Many Israelis outside of the city equate Tel Aviv with all that’s wrong with contemporary Israel: creeping materialism, a dearth of Zionism, detachment from the travails of those who live in Israel’s conflict zones. “Their willingness to contribute to the state is zero,” Shlomo Katabi, an outgoing police chief in the West Bank, said of Tel Aviv residents, in an early June interview with Army Radio. “They sit in Tel Aviv, park their SUVs on Sheinkin Street, drink espresso with their legs crossed, and allow themselves to criticize [Jewish settlers in the West Bank].” Katabi’s barb is emblematic of the irritation many feel about the city, a stronghold of the political left and a place where the rate of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) service is below average. While the rate nationally of draft-age Israeli males who do not serve is about 25 percent, in Tel Aviv it is approximately 30 percent, according to the IDF. Even though military service is mandatory in Israel, it’s relatively easy to evade the draft—by declaring mental incompetence, providing a doctor’s letter attesting to physical disabilities, or objecting from serving on pacifistic grounds. When southern Israel came under fire last winter during the military operation in Gaza, Israeli media were filled with commentators decrying the lack of concern among Tel Aviv residents. Much of this was misplaced blame (the war wasn’t readily visible in Jerusalem, either), but Tel Aviv stood as the symbol of Israeli disconnect. In addition, the impression is that many in Tel Aviv look down their noses at Jerusalem—and pretty much the rest of the country—as parochial, uncultured, and fraught with conflict. “Tel Aviv is an oasis of normalcy in an insane country,” wrote Gideon Levy, a columnist for Israel’s daily newspaper

Ha’aretz, in a scathing response to Katabi’s barb about Tel Aviv residents. “Between the espresso and the SUV arise art, culture, finance, science, intellect, media, openness, and a healthy (albeit insufficient) introspection of the State of Israel, without which it has no real backbone.” For his part, Tel Aviv’s mayor rejects the notion that his city is detached from the rest of Israel. “I completely don’t see Tel Aviv as a bubble, but as representative of mainstream Israel,” says Huldai. “By the same token one can say that Jerusalem is a bubble, one can say that the Negev is a bubble, one can say that the Galilee is a bubble. We are all one state.”

The Tel Aviv Success Story If Tel Aviv is a bubble, it’s a big one: It encompasses roughly half the country’s population. While the municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa (the two cities merged in 1950) holds just over 380,000 residents, most Israelis identify Tel Aviv loosely as the urban center of the country’s most densely populated area. More than 3 million people live in greater Tel Aviv and although the city has not merged with smaller surrounding municipalities, the lines are blurry. Tel Aviv University is located in the suburb of Ramat Aviv. Tel Aviv’s famous diamond exchange, which produces about 50 percent of the world’s polished diamonds, is in Ramat Gan, just across the Ayalon Highway; Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport is in the city of Lod, about 10 miles away. In just 100 years, Tel Aviv has transformed from little more than a speck on the map into a magnet for young people, professionals, and artists. In 2008, the city was ranked 42nd in the world in Foreign Policy magazine’s Global Cities Index, which measures business activity, ability to attract talented and diverse populations, openness to the outside world, cultural experience, and influence on global policymaking. Tel Aviv is the place where young secular Israelis typically migrate after university, finding homes, jobs, and social networks. Jerusalem may be Israel’s capital city, but Tel Aviv is its undisputed capital of cool. “I’ve lived in many places—New York, Boston, Oxford—and I don’t know any other city in the world that has the energy and the edginess that Tel Aviv has,” Harman says.

Harman’s late grandfather, Avraham Harman, was president of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and served as Israel’s ambassador to the United States for nearly a decade. The younger Harman, a professor at BarIlan University, moved to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem four years ago. “You go out at 3 a.m. and you see people playing chess; everything goes on until three, four, five o’clock in the morning. The night spills into the day, and the day spills into the night,” Harman says. Tel Aviv’s vibrancy is the city’s most salient element. It’s a place with myriad established music venues, dance spaces, and theaters. It’s a place that’s constantly reinventing and redefining itself. However, while Tel Aviv has managed to become a global city, it hasn’t lost its authenticity or unique character. The old has been preserved with the new. Just steps away from the trendy cafes and boutique clothing of Sheinkin Street there is a bustling outdoor market, Souk HaCarmel, that harks back to the state’s early days: You can buy everything there from used clothing to Turkish desserts. Neve Tzedek, the city’s first neighborhood, which was home to artists and writers in its

TES A D 0

early decades, fell into disrepair at the end of the 20th century. Then, a few years ago, young people looking for more affordable digs rediscovered the enclave. Along with beautifully restored homes, the neighborhood now features galleries, cafes, boutique hotels, and a performing arts center. Like Neve Tzedek, a generation ago Tel Aviv aspired to be world-class but seemed to lack class of its own. The high-tech boom that fueled the city’s growth over the last decade was in the future, and the most prominent feature was the Shalom Meir Tower—a building reminiscent of a Soviet apartment block overlooking a large public square. Many parts of Tel Aviv were somewhat seedy, from its grimy central bus station to the shirtless old men who populated the city’s beaches. Today, the area around the bus station in the city’s southern district remains grungy—it’s a haven for drugs and the city’s barely concealed houses of ill-repute—but most of the rest of Tel Aviv has grown up. The city has illegal laborers working in the shadows, but also dozens of advocacy groups dedicated to helping them secure their rights. There are indigent neighbor-

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hoods like Hatikva, but also community service programs to help inner-city youth and the elderly. There are legions of lawyers, businessmen, and computer programmers, but also bohemians, Hasidim, and Sudanese asylum-seekers. Five-star restaurants that serve shrimp and calamari flourish alongside down-home hummus joints. Eight new skyscrapers tower over the 36-story Shalom Meir Tower, and there are luxury apartment buildings in north Tel Aviv, but the city also has invested in restoring historic structures in neighborhoods like Neve Tzedek.

Looking Ahead It’s difficult to say where Tel Aviv will be a decade from now, let alone in the next 100 years. The public transportation system is wanting, as the mayor is quick to acknowledge. Bus lines crisscross the city, but traffic is horrendous. Tel Aviv has considered several proposals for a light-rail system, but has yet to green-light any particular plan. Parking is a nightmare, and expensive. Tel Aviv also is one of the most costly places to live in Israel. Young people rou-

tinely complain about the lack of affordable housing. Capitalizing on the high demand, some landlords illegally carve apartments into tiny, poorly ventilated units. “What I miss most about the old Tel Aviv is a certain sense of innocence that was there,” says Yehuda Melzer, a philosophy professor and founder of a small Tel Aviv publishing house. A Tel Aviv native who was born in the 1940s, Melzer recalls soccer fields and orchards that used to exist in the city. “Though this whole area is like a small Manhattan, I still can smell the orchards, the swimming pool, and a zoo that was here in the 1950s,” Melzer says. “I could hear the lions from my bedroom.” While there’s still a sizable gap between rich and poor in the city that runs north to south (north is wealthy, south is poorer), Tel Aviv has stepped up investment in some of its poorest neighborhoods. More than $1 billion has been invested in Jaffa over the last decade, according to the mayor’s office. Much maligned and neglected for most of Israel’s existence, partly because of its Arab demographic, Jaffa now is undergoing gentrification. The expense of living in Tel Aviv proper has abetted this trend as

young Israelis have gone to Jaffa in search of affordable apartments. Today the neighborhood is two-thirds Jewish, one-third Arab. Mayor Huldai dismisses the claim that young people cannot afford to live in Tel Aviv, noting that 30 new kindergartens have opened in the city in the last year. But Tel Aviv still ranks as among the 15 most expensive cities in the world. As it enters its second century, the biggest question the city faces in its immediate future is how it will weather the global economic downturn. A number of development projects and plans to ease congestion are on hold or have been scaled back, and residents are worried about quality of life deteriorating. In truth, however, the challenges Tel Aviv faces during tough times are simply no different than the challenges it has faced in good times: How can the old be preserved while building the new? How can the city ensure that economic interests do not trample social and environmental concerns? How can the city serve both rich and poor? Regardless of how these concerns are resolved, Tel Aviv is likely to retain its place as Israel’s most admired and reviled city.

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Acknowledging the Cost of Indifference B’nai B’rith Helps Pen Death Ship Resolution By Janet Lubman Rathner

T

Photo by Corbis

hanks in great part to B’nai B’rith, a congressional resolution has formally recognized the role the United States played in the tragic fate of a ship of Jews fleeing Europe in 1939. In May of that year, the German ocean liner M.S. St. Louis arrived in Havana. It was no ordinary cruise. On board were 937 Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe fleeing Nazi persecution. Most had applied for visas to enter the June 8, 1939: Suicide boats cluster around the M.S. St. Louis in Havana harbor in United States and expected to order to prevent anchoring in the harbor. stay in Cuba only until government red tape was untangled. the St. Louis no choice but to ish victims of the Holocaust were Under the immigration laws turn around and head back to 254 St. Louis passengers, and of the day, the Jews couldn’t dis- Europe and its awaiting horrors. many of those who survived sufembark in Cuba without proper At the last minute, re-entry fered in concentration camps. paperwork. A quota system in to Germany was avoided when This fueled-by-indifference the United States placed them Jewish organizations, led by tragedy is believed by many at the bottom of a years-long the Jewish Joint Distribution educators and historians to have waiting list—preventing them Committee, negotiated refugee served as a justification to the from gaining asylum. agreements with the governments Nazis to commence with their In full view of the lights of of Great Britain, the Netherlands, Final Solution. Miami, the safe haven they had Belgium, and France. However, “Had the passengers been welpaid to reach, the passengers for many that shelter proved comed to these shores, it would wired President Franklin D. temporary as, within months, have sent a strong message to Roosevelt for help. Western Europe fell to Hitler’s the Nazi hierarchy that the eyes He did not respond, leaving army. Among the 6 million Jewof the free world were fixed on

hatred of the Nazi government,” says Daniel S. Mariaschin, executive vice president of B’nai B’rith International. Despite several books that document the incident and, in 1976, the Academy Awardnominated film about her, “Voyage of the Damned,” the story of the St. Louis has received scant attention when the Holocaust is studied. There is now the possibility of change. With B’nai B’rith International playing a key role in drafting the legislation, the Senate—on the 70th anniversary of the ill-fated trip—unanimously passed Resolution 111, which for the first time formally acknowledges the role of the United States in the St. Louis debacle. “We are proud of our involvement in the passage of this bill,” says Eric Fusfield, director of legislative affairs at B’nai B’rith International. “B’nai B’rith strives to stand as an advocate for human rights internationally. To continued on pg. 30

Inside this Issue

32

34

B’nai B’rith Survey on Diaspora Jews BBI Funds Summer Camp Scholarships A Doorway to Acceptance

31 31 32

B’nai B’rith Today

Acknowledging the Cost of Indifference (continued from pg. 29) continue striving toward closure on this event falls within our commitment to seeking justice in all offenses, past and present.” Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), in whose offices the legislation originated—Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) also was a co-sponsor—believe the recognition raises awareness of the consequences of indifference and hostility at a time when the Jewish community, worldwide, is being subjected to ongoing anti-Semitic diatribes, particularly from the governments of Venezuela and Iran. “Such activity can be expected to increase in intensity as the world continues to navigate the global economic crisis. It is only through a thorough understanding and acceptance of the lessons of the past that we can embrace the challenges of the 21st century,” says Voinovich. “Many of our youngest generations are unaware of the atrocities of the past and the dark days of the Holocaust. This resolution helps highlight…

a specific and tragic moment in American history in which we did not act in accordance with our ideals and principles.” Kohl says it is never too late to study the lessons of a government decision not to respond humanely when directly confronted with evil. “We have made the story of the M.S. St. Louis and its tragic voyage, returning more than 900 Jewish refugees to Europe just three months before the start of World War II, part of the official records of the United States. We hope that, with the passage of the Resolution, a wider audience will reflect on the story,” Kohl says.

Survivors today Seventy years ago, children were among the passengers making this futile trip to safety. Today, some of those who survived offered reflections on the significance of the new legislation. Rudolph Jacobson, now 76 and a retired dentist in Denver, Colo., is pleased about the acknowledgement.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the Holocaustthemed “Maus” biographical graphic novels, Art Spiegelman, and the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies crafted a cartoon about the infamous voyage of the M.S. St. Louis. It is comprised of some old editorial cartoons from 1939 that commented on the plight of the more than 900 Jews, along with comments from the Maus character. To see the cartoon, please go to www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-srv/special/opinions/outlook/st-louis-refugee-ship-blues/static.html.

“It’s about time. What took them so long?” Jacobson says. In the Milwaukee, Wis., suburb of Menominee Falls, Philip Freund, 78, a retired guidance counselor and the St. Louis passenger who contacted Kohl about the recognition issue, says he is appreciative but doesn’t think the legislation will influence current events. “I felt we were owed [something, but] the further we get away from this incident, the less interest, the less impact, it has. It’s sad,” Freund says. Freund turned eight during the time the St. Louis drifted in the Havana harbor. Among the more fortunate—his fam-

ily disembarked in Britain and eventually made its way to the United States—Freund, upon finishing high school, joined the army which, in a twist of irony no doubt influenced by his mother tongue, dispatched him to Germany. Freund worked in intelligence and rose to the rank of colonel. “It’s very interesting: They didn’t want me in 1939, and then later they did,” Freund says. “But I do thank the U.S. It gave me a home, eventually, and I’ve been treated extremely well.” Thanks to Resolution 111, these survivors of the St. Louis tragedy now might be able to finally find some satisfaction.

Author Makovsky Warns of a Nuclear Iran, Discusses Israel-Palestinian Conflict

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avid Makovsky, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Project on the Middle East Peace Process, warned a summer meeting of the B’nai B’rith International Board of Governors of the dangers of a nuclear Iran and shared his take on Israel-Palestinian peace prospects. Makovsky, whose new book with Dennis Ross, “Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a 30 Fall 2009

New Direction in the Middle East,” came out on June 11, is considered a top expert in his field. He cautioned that a nuclear-armed Iran could easily beget a regional arms race. All options for the United States become legitimate should talks fail, though a negotiated political solution is preferred, he says. Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Makovsky says the heated settlement issue is just part of a peace equation that

includes the status of Jerusalem, refugees, and security. “[We must] make the settlement issue moot,” Makovsky says. The board also heard from Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer, who spoke about the Middle East. He noted that the Diaspora Jewish community needs to see protecting Israel not as saving a victim, but as preserving the largest Jewish population in the world.

The board also passed resolutions urging the United States to insist the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and included a reaffirmation of B’nai B’rith support of a two-state solution. A second resolution called on the United States and other governments to “cease all investment in and support of Iran’s energy sector and all exports of refined petroleum products to Iran.” —Sharon Bender

B’nai B’rith Today

Diaspora Jews Need to Pay More Attention to Israel: B’nai B’rith Survey

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lmost half (46 percent) of the Jewish population in Israel believes that American Jewish organizations are not doing enough to bridge policy differences and ease the tensions between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government, according to the fourth annual Survey of Contemporary Israeli Attitudes toward World Jewry, released during the summer. The survey, conducted by KEEVOON Research on behalf of the B’nai B’rith World Center in Jerusalem, delivered statistics on a variety of current issues, including Israeli feelings toward Jews in the Diaspora. The survey found that 57 percent of adult Israeli Jews believe that American organizations that lobby the U.S. government in support of proIsrael policies should always support the policies of the current Israeli government, while 32 percent agreed that such organizations are free to openly oppose them. “Attitudes of Israelis toward the Jewish Diaspora are in constant flux and are [affected] by events taking place in both communities…this year…punctuated by reports in the media of a crisis in Israel-U.S. relations due to policy differences and issues pertaining to conversion and the status of non-Orthodox streams of Judaism,” World Center

Director Alan Schneider says. “Our survey revealed that the Israeli-Diaspora relationship is very important to Israelis. The concern shown by Israelis for the well-being of the Diaspora, and their consideration for the opinions voiced by Diaspora Jewry, is unique.” Of those polled, 54 percent said they support rabbis from the Reform and Conservative movements, stating that rabbis from those branches of Judaism should receive equal status and funding in Israel with Orthodox rabbis. Only 36 percent of those polled expressed opposition to this proposition. In addition, 44 percent supported the State of Israel recognizing Reform and Conservative conversion, while 49 percent insist that only conversions performed by the Chief Rabbinate should be recognized by the state. In an expression of solidarity with the Diaspora, nearly 60 percent of Israelis supported the notion that their tax money should be used to provide basic services such as education, healthcare, and food to Diaspora Jewish communities that are struggling in light of the recent global economic situation, with 36 percent of those polled opposing that view. Among the youngest age bracket polled, in the 18- to 24-year-old demographic, support for using tax money for Diaspora basic services stood at a staggering 73 percent.

Slightly more than half (53 percent) of those polled believed that Diaspora Jewry should consider the opinions of Israelis when deciding issues such as whom to vote for or which policies affecting Israel’s future should be supported or opposed. However, only 40 percent thought that Israelis should consider the opinions of Diaspora Jewry when deciding issues such as who to vote for or which policies affecting Israel’s future should be supported or opposed. “The World Center intends to continue and expand its annual survey of contemporary Israeli opinion on the Diaspora…to provide valuable tools for formulating Israel–Diaspora relations in the future,” World Center Chairman Haim V. Katz says. The telephone survey was conducted June 9 to 11 and included representatives from the Jewish Israeli population over the age of 18. The survey interviewed 500 people and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percent. The B’nai B’rith World Center is the permanent and official presence of B’nai B’rith International in Jerusalem and serves as its public affairs arm in Israel. To receive full details of the survey, please contact Schneider at 972-02-6251743; or email: worldcenter@ bnaibrith.org. —Joel Samen

BBI Funds Summer Camp Scholarships for Returning Campers

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n recognition of the constraints the current economic environment has put on families across the country, B’nai B’rith International (BBI) has announced that it will fund scholarships for an important component of Jewish identity in a child’s life—summer camp. BBI will donate $150,000 to help 90 returning campers enjoy a summer at B’nai B’rith’s Beber Camp in Mukwonago, Wis., and Perlman Camp in Starlight, Pa. “The summer camp experience is a necessity, in that it helps kids build strong values and friendships,” says BBI Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin. “These camps are an important part of our organization’s mission, as they help Jewish kids find and maintain their religious and cultural identity. We are proud to be able to help bring back campers who otherwise may have had to miss out on the experience, given the status of the economy.” “The major increase I’ve taken note of is families that have sent their kids full-session and can no longer afford it because a spouse lost a job, or they’re sending their kids to college, or the funding they had put aside is now going to paying the mortgage,” says Lewis Sohinki, director of B’nai B’rith’s Perlman Camp. “We’re seeing kids [who] have been going for six or seven summers and culminating their camping experience by asking for scholarships.” —Joel Samen B’Nai B’rith 31

B’nai B’rith Today

A Doorway to Acceptance By Rachel Mauro

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hen Charles “Charlie” Swartz, 98, of Providence, R.I., first came to B’nai B’rith, he was primarily concerned with finding a way to become part of American society at a time when Jews were not always accepted. “It was a period of openly expressed anti-Semitism,” says his daughter Nancy Horowitz of Potomac, Md. In an interview with the B’nai B’rith International (BBI) Center for Jewish Culture last April, Swartz, whose parents both came from Eastern Europe at the turn of the century, described B’nai B’rith as helping Jewish immigrants adapt to America. By joining the organization, he also believed he could give his two daughters, Horowitz and Carol Shore, a better life. To honor her father’s devotion to the organization, Horowitz, along with her husband, Richard, set up the Charles Swartz B’nai B’rith Endowment Fund in 2008 to benefit BBI’s general charitable programming. “We all believe it’s important that the organization has funds for it to operate its various programs as it has for so many years,” Horowitz says. Swartz is now retired with his wife, Esther, in Rhode Island, but the gift in his name will continue after he passes. This Fund is given in perpetuity, meaning that the Fund makes annual payments to BBI indefinitely. “I don’t think he ever missed a year of writing a check to B’nai B’rith,” Horowitz says. “I wanted that wonderful tradition to be able to continue into the future.” “Nancy and Richard have been wonderful to work with, and Nancy told me that she did this in her father’s name so that other donors and their families would 32 Fall 2009

Photo by Nancy Horowitz

Charles (“Charlie”) Swartz with his youngest great-grandchild, Abby Horowitz

follow suit. She firmly believes in the beauty of the perpetual gift,” says Sharon Metro Roll, national director of B’nai B’rith’s Planned Giving Department. “Now BBI will receive a gift from her father every year. We hope that our other dedicated supporters will also consider an endowment to fulfill their current giving well into the future.” Swartz joined B’nai B’rith’s Touro Lodge #814 in 1933, shortly after receiving a degree in literature and foreign languages from Brown University. At that time, getting into college was a challenge for many Jews—Swartz brushed up against the quota system of the 1920s, put in place to limit how many Jews were accepted to freshman classes each semester. Although Swartz was accepted to Brown in the spring of 1929, he was informed they did not have room for another Jewish student. Horowitz explained that he hitchhiked to Providence and met with two deans of the university to discuss this “mistake.” Swartz was eventually admitted, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. This experience was part of the reason Swartz joined B’nai B’rith in his hometown of Taunton, Mass.

Not only did Swartz view B’nai B’rith as a way to help Jews integrate into the American scene, the self-described “people person” also said, in the Center for Jewish Culture interview, that he liked the fraternal aspect of the organization. Swartz enjoyed connecting to the Jewish community and also liked serving on interfaith committees. As chair of the program committee of the Winslow Congregational Church’s men’s club in Taunton, he made sure that members agreed upon “everyone having an understanding and a tolerance for differences,” says Horowitz, adding that they often talked about “local issues and national issues of the day.” “Apparently, he felt very comfortable and very accepted, and it evolved into a point where we were living in a small town in northern Massachusetts—the only Jewish family there, and he ran for public office and was elected,” Horowitz says. Swartz served on the board of

education in Dighton, Mass., in the 1940s. Although, apparently, there were some “mutterings” about a Jew running for the school board, Horowitz said that friends rallied in support of her father. “I never experienced any anti-Semitism as a kid,” she says. Swartz was employed as a salesman for a textile company, Mt. Hope Finishing Co., for 18 years. He also worked for Fruit of the Loom, and in his 70s, at the Old Stone Bank in Providence as its Senior Citizens Financial Consultant—a position he created. In his retirement years, he was a delegate to the White House Conference on Aging, created a men’s discussion group at the Providence Jewish Home for the Aged, and even served as a print ad model in his 80s. When told that most models portraying seniors were actually younger people in makeup, Swartz exclaimed that he was “the genuine article old man,” says Horowitz. To create a B’nai B’rith endowment or trust fund, or to donate to the Charles Swartz B’nai B’rith Endowment Fund, please contact the Planned Giving Department, 2020 K Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006; 800-656-5561; plannedgiving@ bnaibrith.org. More information can be found on our website: www.bnaibrith.org/support/ endow_mem.cfm.

In “A Legacy Through the Children” (summer 2009), the name of Bertha Miller was misspelled as Bergha. B’nai B’rith Magazine regrets the error.

Repair the World for Generations to Come. A

s we celebrate the holidays, our thoughts turn to the importance of tradition and family. A key part of this tradition is our commitment to tikkun olam—repairing the world. B’nai B’rith does this work every day, in communities at home and abroad. Now we need your help. Consider a gift that will ensure Jewish continuity and provide important services now and in the years to come. Contact our planned giving professionals to discuss a bequest that meets your family’s current needs and future goals. Together, we can make the world a better place.

To Make a Bequest

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bequest to the B’nai B’rith Foundation of the U.S. will perpetuate your love for Judaism by providing positive Jewish experiences for young people and important services for Jews of all ages around the world. To remember B’nai B’rith in your will or estate plan, please include: B’nai B’rith Foundation of the U.S. (tax ID # 53-0257218) 2020 K Street, NW Washington, DC 20006

The B’nai B’rith Planned Giving Team

Planned Giving: Ensuring a Jewish Future B’nai B’rith Foundation of the U.S. • 2020 K Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006 • 800-656-5561

B’Nai B’rith 33

B’nai B’rith Today

Left: United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses some 200 people during a conversation with the B’nai B’rith International Global Round Table in June. Listening on the dais is (from left) BBI Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin and Chairman of the Executive Dennis W. Glick. The group meets regularly to discuss current global issues, in a series titled “The Human Face of Global Affairs.” Right: Anja Litvak, a legal advisor to the Latvian Mission to the U.N., asks Ban a question.

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz Receives B’nai B’rith Heritage Award

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’nai B’rith International (BBI) presented U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) with the B’nai B’rith Heritage Award on May 20. The award was given by BBI’s Chairman for Philanthropic and Charitable Giving Bruce Pascal, as part of B’nai B’rith’s Jewish Heritage Month Breakfast, which was co-sponsored with

the American Sephardi Federation and held at the recently completed U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C. “I thank B’nai B’rith for all they do for the Jewish community,” says Wasserman Schultz. “It is such an honor—not just to receive an award from your organization, but to feel like I am part of a truly caring Jewish community.”

Danielle Borrin, of the Office of Public Engagement, presented the assembly with President Obama’s official proclamation, which declared May as Jewish American Heritage Month. Wasserman Schultz has sponsored Jewish American Heritage Month before the House for the past four years. The breakfast also included a presentation on “Judaism Then

and Now” by retired Library of Congress American history specialist Marvin Kranz and a performance by the fourth-grade choir of the Jewish Primary Day School of Washington, D.C. Gwen Zuares, chair of the B’nai B’rith Center for Jewish Culture, hosted the program. — Rachel Mauro

Interim Director of Communications Harvey Berk B’nai B’rith Today (BBT) is now a special section in B’nai B’rith Magazine. BBT will focus on timely, major issues affecting the members, supporters, and leaders of B’nai B’rith International, including regional success stories, programming, departmental initiatives, events, etc. Strictly regional news will now be covered on our upcoming websites, whose launch dates will soon be announced. If a regional story is newsworthy, timely, and unique, it will be considered for submission to BBT and publication in the magazine. ullmll m22e00r00 992 0 0 9 33 44 FsFaa

Editorial Director Hiram M. Reisner Designer Vivian Hayward B’Nai B’rith 34

Aging in a Tough Economy By Rachel Goldberg, Ph.D.

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can turn anything into an aging issue. I can link my concerns for the lives of older adults to everything from environmental policy to energy conservation to genetic discrimination. Sometimes it’s easy— especially in a recession, and when my forum is an issue of B’nai B’rith Magazine focusing on poverty in the Jewish community. The economic downturn and recession nightmare could begin to wane by the time you read this piece. But even if the economy is on the upswing, millions of older Americans will have seen their lives permanently impacted. Moreover, the way the rest of us age, save, and retire may be changed as well. Here’s a look at just a few of the lessons learned the hard way:

1) We must have a retirement safety net. There was a time when some of us looked at the thriving stock market and regretted that we hadn’t poured all of our retirement savings—including the money we all contribute to social security—into it. Those of us who understand Social Security’s role as the stable, reliable workhorse of retirement security fought to protect it from schemes to turn it into private accounts. Millions of retirees and near-retirees have seen the investments they were counting on cut in half—or worse. It’s terrible, and will restructure retirement plans and housing arrangements for thousands if not millions of Americans of all ages (welcome to unintentional multi-generational living). Many Americans at or near retirement are scrambling to change plans because two of their biggest investments, stocks and homes, are worth less than they once were. This is rippling through the market, as sagging home sales prevent older adults from borrowing against or selling their homes to fund their retirement. Unfortunately, we are seeing what happens to people who do retire or get sick in

a bad market. It’s not exactly a bright side, but it is reassuring to see that policymakers now seem more aware of the need to keep Social Security safe.

2) We really do need healthcare reform. B’nai B’rith got involved in healthcare reform for one basic reason: Healthy aging doesn’t happen by magic. It doesn’t start at age 65. Healthy aging requires a mix of good choices and good healthcare, and that means access to healthcare and health information throughout the life span. Too many Americans go years, even decades, with little access to preventive and diagnostic medicine, which helps us all avoid or manage the most debilitating (and expensive) conditions. Unfortunately, the current recession has made quite succinctly the case reformers have been struggling to make for at least a decade. That is: Under our current healthcare system, even those with good benefits don’t have health security. Even the best employer-sponsored coverage goes away if the job disappears. And if employers are facing a bad economy, they try to save money by cutting healthcare or shifting more costs onto employees.

3) Housing affects everything. And homeownership can’t be the only goal. When we think of real estate investors, we don’t necessarily think of ourselves or our parents and grandparents. But for millions of older adults, their house is a good chunk of their nest egg. Just as a crashing stock market hit their retirement savings, the housing market collapsed. That prevented many from retiring and severely damaged senior-living communities that provide an array of services—especially those that cater to older adults, who sell their homes to invest in a retirement community’s future. But its not just owners who got hurt,

Photo by iStockphoto

and that point often gets lost. The housing crisis should serve as a reminder that there is already a lack of affordable rental housing. Not everyone—young, old, or in the middle—owns a home. Not everyone will. The dream of homeownership is wonderful, but it’s not for everyone. Some will never have the economic resources or stability to own homes. Others move too often for work for ownership to make economic sense. And those with the least may always be renters—which doesn’t mean they should be sentenced to substandard housing because they fell short of the homeownership dream. Foreclosures and economic instability have threatened the stock of affordable housing. Buildings designated for below-market rents can’t fund the improvements needed to stay habitable, and fewer investors are interested in the tax breaks that come from investing in these properties. It may be overly optimistic of me (and I am not known for my optimism) to think we will find lessons in all of this and learn to save and invest carefully. I do think we can identify some simple truths from this recession. Should we have caught on sooner? Sure. But better late than never. Rachel Goldberg is B’nai B’rith’s director of senior advocacy. B’Nai B’rith 35

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u ] t Huntington Harbour Mall 16881 Algonquin St. H.B.

Please Mention This Ad

L’Shanah Tova

COMFORT KEEPERS

Assisted Living in Your Own Home • Non-Medical, In-Home Care Our Caregivers are Fully Bonded, Insured, Trained and Screened (Including Criminal Background Checks) Errand Services • Housekeeping • Bathing & Personal Hygiene Transportation • Meal Preparation • Laundry Call For FREE Consultation Each Office Independently Owned & Operated

(310) 842-9700

Fringale

Hearing Resource Center of San Mateo

Bete’ Avon The Urge To Eat.

For Lunch or Dinner OPEN 7 NIGHTS A WEEK

Rebecca Dolan, Au. D. Kimberly Krantz, M.S. Christine Telleen, M.A. Katherine Salkin, Au. D. Donald E. Morgan, Ph.D. Audiologists providing: • Diagnostic hearing testing and counseling. • Hearing aid fitting and service to individuals of all ages with hearing loss.

TEL•415•543•0573

100 S. Ellsworth Ave., Suite 303 San Mateo, CA 805 Veterans Blvd., Suite 115 Redwood City, CA 94063

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SALES & RENTAL

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570 FOURTH STREET SAN FRANCISCO • 94107

650-579-4470

COLORADO

OUTDOOR KITCHEN DISTRIBUTORS INC. “DENVER’S COMPLETE BARBEQUE SHOP”

Ducane, Broil King, OCI Big Green Egg • Broilmaster Natural Gas & LP Grills Bar Stools & Fireplaces & Inserts Patio Furniture & Accessories

303-991-9911

4401 S. Tamarac Pkwy. Denver, CO 80237

This space could be yours! To advertise in our Mart Sections, call 866-612-4295.

B’Nai B’rith 39

ILLINOIS

CONNECTICUT

Adrianne Sussman, Chef/Owner

JAY S. GOLDENBERG

Stamford Marble Imports Co.

ATTORNEY & COUNSELOR

B’nai B’rith Member

“We are direct importers from around the world.”

Wills, Estates, Trusts, Probate Buy-Sell Agreements Business Succession Planning

Custom Fabrication & Installation to Architectural Specifications

Fine American Dining

Small Weddings, Showers & Rehearsal Dinners Connecticut Magazine, July 2004

Fireplace Surrounds, Vanity Tops, Kitchen Countertops, Tables & More! Architects & Decorators are Welcome! Large Selection of Marble, Granite Ceramic Tile, Natural Stone. (including custom & hand-painted tile)

Voice: 312-346-7899 Fax: 312-896-5047 800-346-1763 attyjsg@chicplan.com www.chicplan.com

12 Camp Avenue, Stamford, CT tel: 203.322.5457 fax: 203.329.9873

150 N. Michigan Ave. Ste. 2800 Chicago, IL 60601

“Delightful by day, magical by night

Connecticut Magazine, April 2001

Foreign & Domestic Repairs

“...New American without the attitude.” Dinner Tues.-Sat. 5:30 to Close Sunday Brunch 11:30 to 3:30

Reservations Preferred

218 Kent Rd., New Milford, CT

860-354-6001

www.adriennesrestaurant.com

Auto Repair Inc. Preferred Services Since 1972

State Certified Auto Emissions Repair 174 West Center Street Manchester, CT Phil, Jim & Paul Locicero

Family Owned and Operated Since 1972

Tel. (860) 646-5036 Mon-Fri 7:30am-5:30pm

• State-of-the-Art Spray Booth and Bake Oven • FREE Estimate • FREE Loaner Car • Frame Machine & Measurement System

Connecticut Party Rentals Specializing In Tent Rental 860-658-1600 Charles Hall - Owner Simsbury, CT

Foreign Car Specialists Porsche, Volvo, Mercedes, BMW FREE Pickup & Delivery Your Insurance Company Knows Us! 36 Lucy St. Woodbridge, CT (between Rte. 63 & 67)

(203) 397-2909 WOODBRIDGE (203) 387-8069 AUTO BODY SHOP, Fax: (203) 389-4002 INC.

DELEWARE Delaware

FLORIDA

EDEN

GENERAL SALES , INC.

Bold American Food Indoor/Outdoor Casually Elegant Atmosphere Award Winning Wine List Wine & Martini Bar

(302) 227-3330

23 Baltimore Ave. Rehoboth, DE www.edenrestaurant.com

40 Fall 2009

Free Catalog

Creativity Is The Key To Our Success… And Yours

Life Event Favors and Gifts

Wearables • All Promotional Products Email: gsi2@bellsouth.net or visit: www.generalsalesmiami.com 8560 NW 56th Street • Miami, FL

(305) 592-2700 • Fax: (305) 592-2052

Passport Renewal Service

Passport Renewals Visas Legalizations Instant Passport Photos

NO APPOINTMENT NEEDED Perry International www.perryvisa.com

312.372.2711 Fax - 312-372-2715

100 W. Monroe Chicago Monday-Friday 9 to 5

] u

• Nursery Furniture & Accessories • Big Kids Bunks, Desks, Twin Beds • Strollers, Carriages, Highchairs • Crib, Cradle & Twin Bedding • Shower & Gift Registry A Family Business SInce 1917 Open 7 Days For Your Convenience WE DELIVER & ASSEMBLE

www.lazarsfurniture.com

847-679-6146

6557 North Lincoln Ave. • Lincolnwood, IL

MARYLAND

ILLINOIS

CHICAGO’S AUDIO/VIDEO RENTAL

SINC

E 19

66

COMPLETE DELIVERY AND SET UP

• VIDEO PROJECTION • HOTEL & RESTAURANT SHOWINGS • FILM PROJECTION • SLIDE PROJECTION • COMPUTER PROJECTION

ESSANNAY SHOW IT

851 WEST GRAND AVE., CHICAGO, IL

audio consultants Sales - Custom Installations Home Theaters Audio and Video Specialists Since 1967 1014 Davis St. Evanston, IL 60201

Ph. (847) 864-9565 Fax (847) 864-9570

www.audioconsultants.com

800.427.6968 Mention B’nai B’rith When Calling

www.annapolishealthcare.com

ANNAPOLIS HEALTHCARE SUPPLIES FORMERLY ADAMS MEDICAL

Rental • Sales • Service Ostomy - Incontinent Supplies Diabetic Supplies - Hospital Beds Bathroom Safety Aids - Wheelchairs PICK UP & DELIVERY AVAILABLE WE BILL MEDICARE FOR YOU

]

410-295-7300

Rosh Hashanah Greetings To Our Many Friends

MASSACHUSETTS

BROOK WEINER L.L.C.

DONNA’S CAKES

Closely Held Businesses Individuals Banks/Real Estate Valuations

312-629-0900 125 South Wacker Drive, Suite 1000, Chicago, IL

u

117 Gibraltar Ave., Annapolis, MD

“CAKES ARE ALL WE DO” Custom Designed Wedding Cakes Corporate Logo & Photo Cakes Children’s, “3-D” & Hand Drawings Braille & Adult Cakes

THE CAKE EXPERTS • WE DELIVER •

617-327-5916

100 Spring St., West Roxbury, MA

INDIANA

LAVEN

InsuranceMichiana.com Commercial Coverages Property & Casualty Personal Lines • Long Term Care Group Health • Competitive Rates Online Quotes

IOWA LAW OFFICES OF WILLIAM T. McCULLOUGH

FIELDS OF PRACTICE: ESTATE PLANNING, TAX AND BUSINESS LAW Admitted To Practice In Iowa, Illinois & Calif

2628 S. Michigan St., P.O. Box 2379 South Bend, IN 46680-2379 Phone 574.291.5510 • Fax 574.291.8505 Toll Free 1.800.552.2910 www.insurancemichiana.com

220 EMERSON PLACE, SUITE 301 DAVENPORT, IOWA 52801 TELEPHONE (563) 326-4060 FAX (563) 323-4785

KANSAS

KENTUCKY

The best things in life are hassle free. • Guaranteed same-day service • Fully-stocked trucks • Exact quotes • No overtime charges for service partners • 24/7 Emergency service • Family owned and operated • Big enough to handle any size job • More than 30 years experience

(913) 888-4BOB Fast, friendly … finally!

SAVE $39

Free Dispatch Fee!

bobhamilton.com

• Fashion Eyewear • Contact Lenses • Artificial Eyes • Free Hearing Evaluations Mon - Tues 9-6 • Wed-Fri 9-5 • Sat 9-1 - closed 1st Saturday each month -

www.lenzoptical.com

(502) 897-0856 4012 Dupon Circle, Louisville Sherwood Buliding

So MUCH MORE than a Country Store!

- Local Apples Available Year-Round -Market FreshProduce -Just Pressed Filtered Cider - Homemade Entrees - Deli Sandwiches - Homemade Soups - Gourmet & Specialty Items - Local Bakery Treats - In-Season Flowers (978) 779-2733 www.boltonorchards.com Rts. 110 & 117 Bolton, MA 01740

Open Daily

8am-6pm B’Nai B’rith 41

MINNESOTA

MASSACHUSETTS

Complete Paint & Collision Repair • Free Estimates • Expert Body Repairing and Painting • All Insurance Estimates Accepted • Certified Technicians

Boulevard Collision 6901 Laurel Ave., Golden Valley Minnesota, 55426

MICHIGAN

ORNERSTONE

763-595-0006

RETAIL SHOWROOM LARGEST SELECTION

Monday - Friday 7:30-5:30

SPECTACULAR SERVICE

After Hours Towing 454-1533

CONTRACTOR FRIENDLY Granite and Marble Countertops & Vanities

508-230-TILE (8453)

EASTON INDUSTRIAL PARK 15F Plymouth Drive, So. Easton, MA 02375

MICHIGAN

877 94 9 PE T S

Blvd. Collision

Boarding . Grooming . Training . Daycare Ask about our airport shuttle!

When you need physical, occupational or speech therapy, life can shift into a lower gear. We’re here to help you get back up to speed. Our therapy team will custom-build a program just for you, including aggressive goals and measurable outcomes all under your doctor’s direction. Call for details.

WINDOW TREATMENT YOU WILL LOVE... “EVERYTHING FOR YOUR WINDOWS”

HealthCall of Detroit Providing Quality in Home Services for Southeastern Michigan

• Complete Home Health Services • Nursing (R.N., L.P.N. & C.N.A.) • Medical Supplies

1-800-991-9933

DON’T SETTLE FOR JUST STOCK SIZES CUSTOM WORK & WINDOW SHADES MADE ON SITE “Finest Quality Material and Workmanship at Economy Prices”

MODERN WINDOW SHADE CO. For In-Home/Office Estimates Call

612-729-8256

Fax 612-729-3688 OPEN: MON-FRI 8:00 AM - 4:30 PM Serving St. Paul & All Suburbs Locally Owned Since 1932 3400 CEDAR AVE.

MINNESOTA Restore your karma. Remodel.

y for a b et t er r ec over Danto Family Health Care Center 6800 W. Maple West bloomfield, MI 48322 248-788-5300

Designing, remodeling and building with a conscience. (612) 789-7070 www.otogawa-anschel.com

42 Fall 2009

394

Laurel Ave.

26245 Michigan Ave / petsuiteretreat.com

Greetings to B’nai B’rith From

Rehab helps return you to your life cycle.

Louisiana

Tile & Marble

NEBRASKA

NEW JERSEY HEATING & AIR CONDITIONING

COMMERCIAL & RESIDENTIAL

AUTHORIZED SERVICE

SALES - DESIGN - INSTALLATION

HEAT PUMP SYSTEMS SERVICE ALL MAKES FINANCING AVAILABLE

In your time of need you can rely on us Serving the Jewish Community as an independently owned and operated funeral home with compassionate, affordable funeral services for over 25 years.

Martin Goldstein, Manager NJ Lic. No. 4025

Nesanel M. Rabenstein NJ Lic. No 4621

Eric J. Amyot, Director

Contact Arlene Kessler

NJ Lic. No. 4179

(402) 333-2775

313 Second St. • Lakewood, NJ 08701 800-487-2553 • 732-364-0900

11701 Centennial Road, Omaha, NE

www.belkoffgoldsteinfuneralchapel.com

24 HR EMERGENCY SERVICE

Weddings • Bar/Bat Mitzvahs Meetings • Outings Banquet Facilities Up To 400 Guests Seperate Glatt Kosher Kitchen JSOR Supervised Lovely Golf Course View

Oxygen Users, Miss your family?

BEAUTY SPA AT THE

Get your life back!!!

DERMATOLOGY CENTER

(732) 922-8200 ext 12 210 Jumping Brook Rd. Monmouth County, NJ www.jumpingbrookcc.com

Oxlife lightweight, American-made oxygen machines produce 3 or 6LPM continuous oxygen. for home, car, even overseas. 4-year warranty*.

(800) 780-2616 www.oxlifeinc.com

Please Mention This Ad When Calling

NEW YORK

NEVADA

It’s not a special offer, just plain everyday low rates. • Convenient local office • Money-saving discounts • Low down payments • Monthly payment plans • 24-hour service and claims

For The Best In Skin, Hair

Best Wishes to B’nai B’rith

& Body Care Call

201-567-6020 363 GRAND AVE., ENGLEWOOD, NJ 07631

www.TheBeautySpa.com

Kulite Semiconductor Products, Inc. One Willow Tree Road Leonia, NJ 07605

NEW MEXICO

BATHTUB & TILE REGLAZING

STATE OF THE ART FACILITY

Ser ving Westchester Since 1978

REDECORATE WITHOUT MAJOR RENOVATIONS

AUTO • HOME • RENTE RS MOTORCYCLE • BOAT

702-643-0057

3315 W Craig Rd, Ste 110 No Las Vegas, NV 89032 Home, renters, and boat coverages are written through non-affiliated insurance companies and are secured through Insurance Counselors Inc, the GEICO Property Agency. Some discounts, coverages, payment plans, and features are not available in all states or in all GEICO companies. © 2007 GEICO. The GEICO gecko image © GEICO 1999-2007

We Specialize in Repairing: ACURA • AUDI • BMW • HONDA • INFINITI • ISUZU JEEP • LEXUS • MAZDA • MERCEDES • MITSUBISHI NISSAN • SAAB • SUBARU • TOYOTA VOLKSWAGEN • VOLVO and other Fine Imports Scheduled Maintenance

OPEN MONDAY - SATURDAY 8 - 6

1 1/2 blocks East of Siler Rd. on Agua Fria

Call for Details

2786 AGUA FRIA

Don't Remove Me

Improve Me

SHUTTLE SERVICE

DIAGNOSTIC SERVICE - GENERAL AUTOMOTIVE REPAIRS - FUEL INJECTION SPECIALISTS

Serving Santa Fe For Over 23 Years

- ALL WORK GUARANTEED ENJOY BEAUTIFUL NEW LOOKING FIXTURES AT A FRACTION OF THE COST OUR FINISH CURES OVERNIGHT • FIXTURES CAN BE USED NEXT DAY

• Alignments • Electrical Troubleshooting • Clutch Repairs • Mufflers • CV Joints • Tune-Ups • Brakes • Diesel Repair • Struts-Transmissions • Front End Rebuilding

FREE TOWING,

Reface – Don't Replace BATHTUBS • TILE • SINKS

471-0326 i [ www.fastsf.qwestdex.com

r

CALL FOR FREE INFORMATION

914-734-9000 1-800-540-1068 72 GALLOWS HILL ROAD, PEEKSKILL, NY B’Nai B’rith 43

NEW YORK

The Kensico Cemetery

The Kensico Cemeter y (Non-Sectarian) and Sharon Gardens (Jewish Faith) are situated in a rural setting with beautiful trees, rolling hills and sweeping lawns in Westchester County. They provide a serene and peaceful resting place not found in many cemeteries today. For FREE color brochure call toll free:

1-888-KENSICO or 1-888-536-7426 P.O. Box 7, Valhalla, NY 10595 Sharon Gardens is a division of The Kensico Cemeter y 914-949-0347

Happy High Holidays

Glaser Bake Shop, Inc. Family Owned & Operated Since 1902

Specializing In Cakes and Home-Made Butter Cookies 1670 First Ave. At 87th St. New York, NY

www.kensico.org

www.sharongardens.com

212-289-2562

OREGON B’nai B’rith Thank You For Your Continued Support QUALITY & DEPENDABILITY– Since 1979

• Business & Conference Printing Services • Large Format Printing & Scanning • Shipping & Mailing Services

• Graphic Design • Bindery Services • Notary Services

1704 SW BROADWAY , PORTLAND, OREGON 97201 Across from Portland State University, off SW Mill. Complimentary parking available.

OTIS CAFE “WORTH THE WAIT”

Everything Is Homemade Breakfast Served All Day Call ahead to place large orders.

541-994-2813

503.221.1876 • www.clean-copy.com

Hwy. 18 Otis Junction Otis, OR

PENNSYLVANIA

TENNESSEE

Custom Designed

Kitchen Kitchens & Baths Concepts Inc. Professional Installation Or Delivery Only

JEFFREY M. ENGLE, ESQ., CPA * ESTATE PLANNING • TRUSTS

WILLS • POWERS OF ATTORNEY

Cabinetry By: KOUNTRY KRAFT-SCHROCK & OTHERS

ESTATE ADMINISTRATION • PROBATE

Visit Our Showroom

EVENING AND WEEKEND HOURS

610-789-9594

2510 Huntingdon Pike Huntingdon Valley, PA

Mon-Fri 9-3 Sat 9-Noon Evenings by Appointment 363 West Chester Pike, Havertown, PA

East

6025 Walnut Grove, Suite 508, Memphis, TN 38120

901-767-LUNG

TAX PLANNING & PREPARATION

215-947-6707

RIDDLE VILLAGE LIFE CARE RETIREMENT COMMUNITY • Spacious independent living apartments • Assisted living services • Skilled nursing facility • Fine dining • Social activities • Pool • Fitness Room

(610) 891-3700 1048 W. Baltimore Pike, Media www.riddlevillage.com 44 Fall 2009

OUTPATIENT CENTERS

DeSoto

401 Southcrest Circle, Suite 212 Southaven, MS 38671

662-349-0488

Collierville

1500 West Poplar, Suite 206 Collierville, TN 38017

(901) 850-1170

Treating diseases of the chest... where patient care is first

Read past issues of B’nai B’rith Magazine at www.bnaibrith.org.

TEXAS 1508 W. 35th Austin, TX

512-454-2653 $10.00 Value With Any New Or Transferred Prescription Cash Purchase: $10.00 off prescription price

Long-Term Care and Custom Compounding Specialists Limit one per customer. No cash refund. State and local restrictions apply. Exp. December 31, 2009

NATURAL STONE INC.

Serving Houston for 2 Generations

Natural Marble, Granite, Slate, Limestone Travertine, Soapstone, Ceramic & Mosaic Tile

• Custom Fabrication • Installation • Design Assistance • Residential/Commercial

512-452-6646 6725 Shirley Avenue Austin,Texas 78752

FAST FRIENDLY SERVICE

• TENTS • CANOPIES • SMOKERS • CONCESSION EQP. • TABLES • DANCE FLOOR

220 University Drive Fort Worth, TX 76107

Houston, TX www.naturalstoneinchouston.com

JOD/ • Secure Records Storage • Tape Rotation Services • Fast Pickup & Delivery • 24-Hour Access • Document Shredding

Simplified Flat Fee Billing No Exit Fees

713-849-5988 www.safesite.cc

• CHAIRS • CHINA • CANDELABRA • SILVER • LINENS • STAGING

(817) 332-5258

713-678-4407

Since 1981

Plumbing & Drain Cleaning All Types of Plumbing Repairs

Taylor’s Rental

ADRIAN’S CUSTOM CLEANERS

“We do it all - We do it right” SAME D AY SERVICE Draper y & Leather Cleaning Wedding & Beaded Gowns In-House Shir t Laundr y Alterations & Repairs • Reweaving OVER 30 YRS EXPERIENCE

u ]

817-732-5171

5800-Z Camp Bowie M-F 6:30-6:30 Sat 8-4

t

817-441-6377 817-596-0106

621 N. FM 1187 #D Aledo Willow Park I-20, Exit 415

VIRGINIA

A Caring, Non-Denominational, Offering Assisted Living Services • Month to Month Leases • Sponsored by the Catholic Diocese of Richmond • Four Distinct Assisted Living Personal Care Plans • Planned Program Of Activities/Events • Fine Dining Services 5345 Marian Lane, Virginia Beach, Virginia 23462 www.marian-manor.com ©Coordinated Services Management, Inc. Professional Management of Retirement Communities Since 1981

757-456-5018

HOME HEATING OIL AUTOMATIC DELIVERY • GASOLINE MOTOR OILS & GREASES • PROPANE PREMIUM DIESEL FUEL • BUDGET PLANS TANKS & PUMPS • 24 HOUR SERVICE 14401 Penrose Pl., Chantilly, VA 703-378-4865

www.SouthernStates.com

L’AUBERGE CHEZ FRANÇOIS A FRENCH COUNTRY INN For Reservations

(703) 759-3800 Open for Lunch & Dinner Receptions • Group Lunches 332 Springvale Rd. Great Falls, VA www.laubergechezfrancois.com

Classic European Fashion American in Paris brings a touch of Paris and Italy to the heart of Old Town. No passport needed! Personalized style consultant service. Open 7 days a week - 10:30 to 7:00 on the corner of King St. & South Payne.

B’nai B’rith Members 1225 King Stree, Alexandria, VA Bring In This Ad For A 703.519.8234 5% Discount Fax: 703.519.8235 B’Nai B’rith 45

WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON D.C.

RS AUTO REBUILD INC. Serving Seattle Since 1965 Fine Rug & Upholstery Specialists Family Owned & Operated For Over 100 Years

www.emmanuelsrug.com emmanuelsrug@earthlink.net 1105 Rainier Avenue S. Seattle, WA 98144

206-322-2200 Fax: 206-325-3841

BODY & FENDER SPECIALISTS All Insurance Accepted • All Work Guaranteed Foreign • Domestic • European Luxury

206-323-3112

1265 S. King, Seattle, WA Free Estimate With Mention Of This Ad.

Packages Available

Windsor Park Hotel

Near Downtown, on Embassy row. Nestled in a charming neighborhood of majestic homes, regal embassies and tree-lined streets that are a pleasure to behold in any season. Walk to the National Zoo, Rock Creek Park, and Woodley Park Metro. All the Capital sights are within easy reach. Moderate Rates • Free Continental Breakfast • 43 Pleasant Rooms with AC, color TV, mini refrigerator, direct dial phones and voice mail. 2 computer stations with wireless internet free to guests. 2116 Kalorama Rd., NW, Washington, DC 20008

202-483-7700 • 800-247-3064 Fax: 202-332-4547 www.windsorparkhotel.com High Holiday Greetings

NEWMAN GALLERY ROTATING EXHIBITS OF ORIGINAL WORKS

Conservation Framing On Premises Art Restoration Free Pick-Up & Delivery

202-544-7577

Please Mention This Ad

513 11th St. SE, Capitol Hill www.newmangallery.com

B ’ n a i B ’ r i t h International May every day in the New Year be filled with health and happiness, joy, abundant peace, and prosperity. Moishe Smith

46 Fall 2009

Daniel S. Mariaschin

With Group Savings Plus®, B’nai B’rith can get more from their auto and home insurance.

Extra savings on auto and home insurance with a special group discount*

Help when you need it

with 24/7 Enhanced Emergency Roadside Assistance** and 24-hour claims service

A multi-policy discount on your home

when you insure both your car and home through Group Savings Plus Chances are, Liberty Mutual’s Group Savings Plus program may be able to offer you more savings and benefits than your current auto and home insurance provider.

AUTO

Get more. Save more. Find out just how much more today. • Call 1-800-524-9400 and mention client #114544 M-F 7a.m.-12:30a.m.; Sat. 7a.m.-11p.m.; Sunday 9a.m.-10p.m.

HOME

• Go to www.libertymutual.com/bnaibrith • Or visit a Liberty Mutual office near you

This organization receives financial support for allowing Liberty Mutual to offer this auto and home insurance program. *Discounts and savings are available where state laws and regulations allow, and may vary by state. To the extent permitted by law, applicants are individually underwritten; not all applicants may qualify. **Coverage provided and underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and its affiliates, 175 Berkeley Street, Boston, MA. A consumer report from a consumer reporting agency and/or a motor vehicle report, on all drivers listed on your policy, may be obtained where state laws and regulations allow. Please consult a Liberty Mutual specialist for specific details. ©2008 Liberty Mutual Insurance Company. All Rights Reserved.

YEAR IN, YEAR OUT, THE MOST TRUSTED NAME TO ISRAEL.

Shana Tova! For more than 60 years travelers have relied on the dedicated Israeli crews of EL AL to deliver the most professional and hospitable experience to our homeland. At EL AL you can also expect: • New planes, new routes • Upgraded entertainment systems at every seat with programs for the entire family

• New advanced sleeper seats in premium classes • Improved health-smart meal options

But that’s not all. This fall, we’ll be announcing even more exciting innovations. Go to elal.com to see new products and services that the New Year will bring. Your visit to Israel begins the moment you board EL AL, the national airline of Israel. For more details, visit www.elal.com or call 800-223-6700 or any travel agent. THE MOST NONSTOP FLIGHTS TO TEL AVIV FROM NEW YORK (JFK/NEWARK) AND THE ONLY NONSTOPS FROM LOS ANGELES, PLUS NONSTOP FLIGHTS FROM TORONTO

www.elal.com