May 20, 2013 Edition of the Reporter

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INSIDE THIS ISSUEJews and sports

Israel paralympian eyes 2016 games; an interview about Hank Greenberg’s continuing fame.

Story on page 11

Performing in IsraelFor popular recording artists, deciding whether to perform in Israel or not makes a statement.

Story on page 12

Women entrepreneurs At a recent conference, Orthodox women networked and shared business advice and ideas.

Story on page 5

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The Jewish Federation of Northeast-ern Pennsylvania now has a page on Facebook to let community members know about upcoming events and keep connected.

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Jewish Federation of Northeastern PennsylvaniaPublished by the VOLUME XI, NUMBER 11

The Radisson Hotel in Scran-ton will be once again the loca-tion of the spring networking breakfast scheduled for Tuesday, May 29, at 8 am. The spring breakfast will be sponsored by DAJ Strategic Solutions of Scranton. A hot breakfast buffet will be served by Colfax Avenue Enterprises. The cost for the event will be $10 per person.

Spring breakfast scheduled for Northeast Jewish Federation Business and Trade Alliance

Eric WeinbergThe spring networking breakfast will be sponsored by DAJ Strategic Solutions.

Spotlight

DAJ Strategic Solutions offers a variety of business consulting ser-vices, among which is the Dream Manager Program. The program focuses on increasing employee engagement, improving employee job satisfaction, developing em-ployee leadership, increasing teamwork and offering a benefit that provides a competitive advan-tage to retain employees.

Eric Weinberg, a “certified dream manager” of DAJ Strategic Solutions, will present a “dreamscaping” session and will encourage members “to start dreaming again.” The purpose is to imagine “a future that’s bigger than our past and in so doing making business better for ourselves,” according to a DAJ representative.

To RSVP, visit www.jewishnepabta.org.

Israel’s ambassador to Senegal, Eli Ben-Tura, and Senegalese government Minister Mamadou Talla spoke at an Israel Independence Day celebration at Dakar’s grand theater on April 30. (Photo by Cnaan Liphshiz/JTA)

Amid rising Islamism in Africa, Israel-Senegal ties flourishingBy CNAAN LIphShIz

DAKAR, Senegal (JTA) – Struggling to be heard over a flock of bleating sheep, Israel’s ambassador to Senegal invited a crowd of impoverished Muslims to help themselves to about 100 sacrificial animals that the embassy corralled at a dusty com-munity center here.

The October distribution, held as French troops battled Islamists in neighboring Mali and one month after Muslim radicals killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, is held annu-ally in honor of Tabaski, the local name of the Muslim Eid al-Adha feast. The distribu-tion is broadcast on national television in a land that is 95 percent Muslim, providing Israel with a powerful platform to burnish its image among Senegalese.

“It registers very strongly with locals that Israelis give them sheep for a Muslim holiday while most Arab embassies do nothing,” said Eli Ben-Tura, the Israeli ambassador.

The animals are just part of the millions that Israel has spent over the years in Senegal, a French-speaking Western African nation of 12 million where the aver-age monthly salary is $158. In return, Senegal has sup-ported Israel’s erection of a barrier to protect itself from Palestinian terrorism and, in December, signed over oil prospecting rights in its ter-ritorial waters to an Israeli-owned mining company.

Over the past decade, Israel’s trade with Senegal has more than tripled.

“Like Israel, Senegal is an island of stability in an un-stable region,” Ben-Tura told JTA in an interview recently at

the Israeli Embassy overlooking Indepen-dence Plaza in Dakar, the capital city.

The importance Israel places on its partnership with Senegal was evident in Ben-Tura’s speech on April 30 at Israel’s 65th Independence Day celebration at the Grand Theatre National, a magnificent structure built with Chinese funding in 2011 near Dakar’s main port. Speaking to an audience of 1,000, Ben-Tura listed

See “Senegal” on page 4

Remapping the Vilnius Ghetto

Menachem Kaiser’s digital map of the Vilnius Ghetto. (Photo from Revilna.org)

By JeFFRey F. BARkeNJNS.org

“How people perished in the ghetto – that I understand; what I cannot understand is how they lived there,” writes Second World

War refugee and esteemed Yiddish poet, Chaim Grade. When Canadian author Me-nachem Kaiser arrived in Vilnius two years ago to begin a Fulbright Scholarship focused on Holocaust research, he observed firsthand

the stark reality behind Grade’s statement. “There is literally no trace of the ghetto left in Vilnius,” Kaiser tells JNS.org. “Hardly even any clues left behind.”

Kaiser’s research has since led to the Vilnius Ghetto Project, an online effort to digitally remap and reclaim the space originally occupied by the Vilnius Ghetto “as a historical site.”

Debuting in May, the project’s website, www.revilna.org, provides a new platform for virtual exploration of Vilnius, also commonly known in Jewish circles by its Russian name, “Vilna,” home of the Vilna Gaon (Rabbi Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman Kremer), the foremost leader of non-Cha-sidic Jewry during the 18th century. Kaiser’s team of cartographers and historians has produced an integrated tool that uses latitude and longitude coordinates to piece together the layout of the old city while integrating textured stories, timelines, biographies and photographic exhibits.

“I was interested in the idea of the ghetto not as an entity, but rather how it came into

See “Ghetto” on page 6

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By BeN CoheNJNS.org

In a recent, exhaustive study of anti-semitism, the German scholar Clemens Heni explains the significance for Christian theology of the story of Ahasver, a Jewish shoemaker in Jerusalem who, legend has it, refused Jesus a resting place as he made his way to Golgotha bearing the cross on his back. Ahasver’s punishment, says Heni, was to wander the world for eternity, an image that formed the basis for what the Nazis famously called “der ewige Jude” – “the eternal Jew.”

“The attribute ‘eternal’ cries out for redemption,” writes Heni. “For Christian-ity, it embodies the refusal on the part of the Jewish people to accept the coming of Jesus as the Son of God.” Of course, as Heni points out, this was a particularly strong theme throughout the Middle Ages. What’s notable, though, is that this same noxious depiction of the Jews is enjoying a new lease of life in certain sections of the Church today.

At the beginning of May, the Church of Scotland published a document titled “The Inheritance of Abraham? A Report on the ‘Promised Land.” Now, doing what I do, I spend a great deal of time reviewing anti-Zionist and antisemitic literature, and I like to think that I am passed being shocked. Reading the Church of Scotland report, was, therefore, something of a rude awakening; so immersed is the text in antisemitic clichés and malicious distortions of Jewish theology that I wondered whether I had been trans-ported back to a time when people didn’t wash or brush their teeth, had a lifespan of 30 years or so and spent their time on this earth living in fear of Jewish devils.

Clearly, the Church of Scotland didn’t expect its report to be greeted by a chorus of dismay, led by Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom Daniel Taub. Only a few days after its publication, the report was removed from the church’s website, amid reassurances that, in the words of the anti-Israel newspaper The Guardian, “the church has never challenged the right of Israel to exist.”

Anyone who has read the report knows that’s nonsense: the Church of Scotland didn’t challenge just Israel’s right to exist, but the legitimacy of Judaism as well!

Much more than a perfunctory apology for causing offense is needed. If the church wants to declare that its war on Judaism is over, it must ditch the report in its entirety and cut ties with Sabeel, a Palestinian Chris-tian institute whose mission is to attack both Zionism and Judaism, and whose poisonous

Church of Scotland needs to take further action

ideology was cited by the church’s report.The purpose of the report was to dismiss

the claim that the “Hebrew Bible” – heaven forbid that these people should use terms like Torah or Tanach! – provides grounds for a privileged connection between the Jewish people and the “Promised Land,” which we Jews sinfully refer to as “Eretz Israel.” What follows is a frontal assault on Jewish “exclusivism” that deploys the tired old trick of citing a Jew – in this case, Mark Braverman, an arch opponent of Zionism – in order to protect the text from accusa-tions of antisemitism.

But antisemitic it most definitely is. Some choice excerpts:

� “Braverman is adamant that Christians must not sacrifice the universalist, inclusive dimension of Christianity and revert to the particular exclusivism of the Jewish faith because we feel guilty about the Holocaust. He is equally clear that the Jewish people have to repent of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians between 1947 and 1949. They must be challenged, too, to stop thinking of themselves as victims and special, and recognise that the present immoral, unjust treatment of Palestinian people is unsus-tainable.”

� “As long as Zionists think that Jewish people are serving God’s special purpose and that abuses by the state of Israel, however wrong and regrettable, don’t invalidate the Zionist project, they will believe themselves more entitled to the land than the Palestin-ian people.”

� “Jesus offered a radical critique of Jewish specialness and exclusivism, but the people of Nazareth were not ready for it... Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple means not just that the Temple needs to be reformed, but that the Temple is finished.”

Let’s translate the above lines minus the academic, ostensibly reasonable tone in which they are couched: “Jews! Stop whining about the Holocaust. Stop making us feel guilty about the Holocaust. Repent, every single one of you, for the evil you have committed against the Palestinians. And, oh yeah, enough of the ‘Chosen People’ thing – you people are so arrogant, no wonder nobody likes you. Even Jesus himself ran out of patience with you...”

The moral crime committed by the Church of Scotland – and I use that phrase deliberately – is rooted not just in the trash-ing of centuries of Jewish learning and scholarship, nor the wholesale fabrication of a Jewish “crime” in the form of the “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinians. More than all of that, this report is a declaration of war against Judaism itself. If the “Temple

is finished,” then the only form of Judaism that is acceptable is the one subscribed to by collaborators like Mark Braverman, who want us to adopt an eternal posture of repentance and shame.

Sabeel, the Palestinian Christian institute whose ideology is reflected by the report, makes no distinction between Zionism and Judaism; just as the ideologues of the now dead Soviet Union insisted there was no difference between the two, so do these radical Christians. And to add grievous in-sult to heinous injury, Sabeel, as the Israeli organization NGO Monitor has repeatedly pointed out, receives funding from the governments, and thus the taxpayers, of countries like Sweden, The Netherlands and Canada to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The consequences of all this are clear, at least to my mind. To posit that Jews might engage in constructive dialogue with the Sabeels of this world is utterly ludicrous. They want to destroy us and their war is a zero-sum game. Our response should be equally harsh: we must seek to destroy them.

That means confronting and exposing them every time they raise their heads, whether in the comments section of a blog or at a student meeting on a college campus. It means highlighting their ideological sup-port for the terrorism that targets Jews solely because they are Jews – when it comes to Sabeel’s worldview, an outrage like last year’s massacre at a Jewish school in the French city of Toulouse should logically be regarded as the natural result of Jewish crimes that go back to the time of Jesus.

Above all, it means targeting their fund-ing sources. And rather than just arguing for funding to be cut, let’s approach that aim more imaginatively. Approximately 100 million Christians today, most of them in Muslim countries, live with persecution of the most grotesque kind: pastors are locked up in Iran, churches are bombed in Nigeria, Copts are ethnically cleansed – yes! – in Egypt. The money that would be otherwise squandered on the irredeemable antisemites of Sabeel, along with their global echo chamber, should be transferred into a global fund to help the persecuted Church.

In both the Jewish and Christian tradi-tions, such an act would be regarded as both charitable and just.

Ben Cohen is the Shillman analyst for JNS.org. His writings on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics have been published in Commentary, the New York Post, Haaretz, Jewish Ideas Daily and many other publications.

By ANdRew BAkeR (JTA) – My first visit to Egypt was eight

years ago. My guide was Carmen Weinstein, the head of Egypt’s Jewish community, and on a hot September day we drove through the usual chaotic traffic with our driver to visit 10 synagogues.

I am the son of American Jews, the grandchild of Jews from Poland, Lithuania and White Russia, and knew little about the history of Jewish life in Egypt. But the synagogues tell that story.

Together, the ancient Ben Ezra syna-gogue in Fustat; the stately Shaar Hasha-maim on Adly Street; the soaring interior of the Karaite synagogue; the Italianate Vitali Madjar synagogue in Heliopolis; the modest synagogue in upscale Maadi built to lure prosperous Jewish residents to the new suburb; and the Maimonides yeshiva and synagogue, a rubble-strewn, roofless building at the time, reflect the rich and diverse religious life that once was Egyptian Jewry.

Nearly all the buildings were empty and unused. In some places a caretaker living in or near the synagogue let us in and escorted us through. Carmen gave each a few pounds and some disapproving words about the conditions, although it was obvious that they had done their best to clean in advance of our visit.

It was evident then, and would become clearer on my many subsequent visits, that Carmen’s mission was to preserve this Jew-ish heritage of Egypt.

To an outsider like me, this seemed like an impossible task. What could one expect with a Jewish community that had dwindled to a few dozen, a government that was at best indifferent and an Egyptian Jewish Diaspora

For Carmen, preserve Jewish heritage in egyptthat had grown increasingly distant?

We have the experience in Eastern Eu-rope to compare – synagogues abandoned and in disrepair, or after Nazi occupation and communist nationalization, turned into factories or theaters or meeting halls. This is the “normal” fate of synagogues when Jews disappear. Everybody knows that.

But not Carmen. And that was the rea-son for her success. She didn’t know this couldn’t be done.

She brought as many of these synagogues as she could under the protection of the country’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and pressed it to make repairs. She simply assumed that each building deserved to be protected, preserved and ultimately restored. She had little patience for those who disagreed.

On each of my visits, we would go together to the Cultural Ministry or the Antiquities Council. Carmen focused on the repairs that were needed and the work to be done. Usually we left with promises.

Those promises were not empty. Shaar Hashamaim synagogue, where Carmen’s funeral took place on April 18, was repaired and restored in time for the 100th anniversary of its dedication. A small exhibition space was built opposite Ben Ezra to tell the story of the genizah documents that were discovered here. And in the most elaborate project to date, the Maimonides yeshiva was fully restored and the adjacent synagogue completely rebuilt.

As I learned from Carmen and other Egyptian Jews, the 12th century Maimonides building was considered a place of miracles – the sick and infirm would spend the night there and be healed. But the biggest miracle in our lifetime was its restoration and dedi-cation two years ago.

One of the greatest challenges she faced was the Bassatine Cemetery, where more than 20,000 squatters were living on the historic Jewish site. Carmen valiantly fought off further encroachment, building walls and imploring authorities to prevent the

looting of memorial stones and the dumping of trash that had become commonplace. In her more optimistic moments, she planted trees and flowering shrubs. Carmen took special care of and frequently visited her mother’s grave there.

In April, we went, at my request, to Bassatine. Conditions had clearly deterio-rated. Walls had been removed, originally to facilitate construction of sewage drains from the squatters’ dwellings. But that work was never completed. Sewage water now flows freely, submerging several acres. The place is open to trash, looters and grazing animals.

I walked through the cemetery until I came to the gravesite of Carmen’s mother. The shrubs that had been planted were uprooted and gone. The facing stones were stolen. Saddest of all, the enclosure to the grave itself had been cemented shut. She would no longer be able to visit, but at least no one would be able to do more damage.

See “Egypt” on page 3

3 MAY 23, 2013 ■ THE REPORTER

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Competing against congregations within the Union for Reform Judaism across the United States, Temple Hesed of Scranton won a contest for gaining the highest percentage of members to sign up for e-mails from the Religious Action Center, Reform Judaism’s arm for social justice.

The prize for winning the contest – which was held in 2012 – will be a visit on Friday, June 7, at 7:30 pm, by Rabbi David Saperstein, director and counsel of the RAC. Saperstein had previously visited Scranton and Temple Hesed when he was the featured speaker at the 2008 Op-penheim Institute. His insight into and commentary on Washington and national issues was reportedly “enthusi-astically received.”

Temple hesed wins national contest, return visit by Rabbi david Saperstein

The Social Action Shabbat service on June 7 will be co-sponsored by the Oppenheim Institute and by Temple Hesed’s Social Action Committee. The committee had initiated and promoted the congregation’s participation in the contest, which members won. The RAC announced that Rabbi Saperstein’s topic will be “The Bible, The Talmud, and Social Justice,” exploring the roots for social justice in all religions.

As executive director of the RAC, Saperstein, who is also an attorney, has become Reform Judaism’s advocate for social justice in Congress and at the White House. His work with legislators and the executive branch in drafting and urging passage of legislation in pursuit of social justice

has led to some considering him to be “one of the most influential rabbis in the United States.”

Saperstein will speak at Social Action Shabbat after a shortened service. The public will be welcome to participate and to meet and speak with Saperstein at the oneg reception following services.

For more information, call Temple Hesed at 344-7201 or e-mail [email protected].

Congregation B’nai harim dedicated Sanctuary

By Lee eMeRSoNMembers of Congregation B’nai Harim attended

the dedication of their sanctuary, in memory of Saul Weinberger, father of member Larry Weinberger, on April 27. The Weinbergers were joined by family members from California and New York, as well as past presidents of the congregation, Mark Silverberg of the Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania

and members. A lunch honoring the family was served following the service.

“Saul grew up in a poor family, which influenced his work ethic at a very early age,” explained a Congregation B’nai Harim representative. “As he became successful he always remembered the poor.” One of his pet charities was providing an education for Jewish children who could not afford it, a tradition continued by his family.

At right: Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania Executive Director Mark Silverberg, Rabbi Peg Kershenbaum and Larry Weinberger attended the sanctuary dedication at Congregation B’nai Harim.

“I never come here anymore,” she told me, and I under-stood why. She now has made one final trip.

We say, in the spirit of Jewish tradition, Yehi zichronah l’vrachah, “May her memory be a blessing.”

If we redouble our efforts to preserve and protect the Jewish heritage of Egypt, if we prevent the further desecra-tion of Bassatine, if we secure the support of friends and allies in this work even in these difficult economic and political times in Egypt, Carmen’s memory will indeed be a blessing.

Rabbi Andrew Baker is the American Jewish Committee’s director of international Jewish affairs.

egypt Continued from page 2

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Israel’s latest gifts to the country: training for hundreds of farmers, preparations to train thousands more by Israeli experts stationed in the country and the establishment of a permanent depot for agricultural equipment and disease control.

Even intercultural activities have not been overlooked. After speeches by Ben-Tura and Mamadou Talla, Senegal’s minister of professional training, Israel Ballet Artistic Director Ido Tadmor and 40 local artists per-formed a modern dance routine featuring tea cups. Dozens of onlookers avidly recorded

their every move on smartphones.“Cultural exchange with Africa has been

neglected for too long,” Ben-Tura said.Yet beneath this seemingly symbiotic

partnership may be a deeper concern. Mali, which used to be part of a federal entity with Senegal, last year witnessed an Islamic insurgency so powerful that French troops were called in to quell it. Some 475,000 people became refugees, many of them in Senegal. Some observers believe Senegal is wooing Israel and the West mainly for protection from the Islamic upheaval.

Spectators at the Israel Independence Day celebration at the grand theater in the Senegalese capital of Dakar on April 30. (Photo by Cnaan Liphshiz/JTA)

A t r i gh t : A S e n e g a l e s e m o t h e r a n d her son stood o u t s i d e t h e Israeli Embassy in Dakar in April. (Photo by Cnaan Liphshiz/JTA)

“The effects of the insurgency are not felt here for the time being,” said Oleg Sergeev, minister-counselor of the Russian Embassy in Dakar. “But the Senegalese authorities are turning westward out of concern over the possibility that the Mali insurgency may be trickling over.”

As an impoverished Muslim nation heavily dependent on foreign aid, Senegal must toe a careful line in its embrace of the Jewish state. Antisemitic books with titles such as “Hitler the Zionist Puppet” are sold here at bookstands and in 2009, several hundred people burned an Israeli flag at a rally to protest Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

The Senegalese government, then chair of the Organization of the Islamic Confer-ence, condemned the attack as “unjustified and unacceptable.” Still, the government’s condemnations never went beyond words.

“It was a very strong reaction, but it didn’t have an impact on diplomatic rela-tions,” said Christian Clages, the German ambassador to Senegal.

Senegalese officials declined to address the reasons for their country’s closeness with Israel. But observers attribute it variously to the country’s moderate brand of Islam, its relative openness to the West and its past disillusionment with Arab regimes. In 1973, under pressure from Arab countries, Senegal severed its ties with Israel.

“The Arabs threatened sanctions and promised free oil, but never delivered, to the bitter disappointment of the Senegalese,” said Zvi Mazel, a former Israeli Foreign Ministry official who negotiated the restora-

tion of diplomatic relations in 1994.Senegalese moderation was on dis-

play in 2012 when Jamra, one of the country’s leading Islamic associations, protested the release of an anti-Muslim film, “The Innocence of Muslims.” The online video triggered violent protests around the world, but in Senegal, it led to the first meeting between Jamra and the Israeli Embassy.

Jamra’s executive president, Imam Massamba Diop, told JTA he learned in his November meeting with Ben-Tura that Israel had nothing to do with the film. And despite his organization’s generally pro-Palestinian posture – it considers Israel’s blockade on Gaza illegal and organizes pro-Palestinian activities in Dakar – Diop supports his government’s friendly relations with Israel.

“The Senegalese people deeply appreci-ate the event,” Diop said of the embassy’s sheep distribution.

Another Senegalese Muslim leader, Sheikh Paye, arrived at the Israel Indepen-dence Day celebration in a shiny, tradi-tional white-and-gold imam robe. A spiritual leader in one of Dakar’s 19 neighborhoods, Paye told JTA that his attachment to Israel stems neither from gratitude for its largesse nor considerations of realpolitik.

“My late father used to be a good friend of several Israeli ambassadors here,” Paye said. “He died three months ago, shortly before the Israeli Embassy’s invitation ar-rived. It’s an honor to represent him here to people from a country he loved, but never visited.”

Senegal Continued from page 1

By RoN kAMpeAS MEMPHIS, TN (JTA) – The thick scent

of a peppery rub wafted through the Mar-golin Hebrew Academy and Corky the Pig embroidered his chef’s hat with a K and became a cow. Just before Purim, the famed Memphis barbecue joint Corky’s, with a hog for its mascot, koshered one of its smokers for a brisket fund-raiser on behalf of the city’s Orthodox Jewish day school. Orga-nizers explained that the unusual marriage of brachas and BBQ was a product of a parlous economy, a small school in need of refurbishing with a limited fund-raising base and the laid-back traditions of a “Shalom y’all” Southern Jewish way of living.

“We need to find any revenue we can,” said Rabbi Gil Perl, the school’s dean.

Converting a happy pig into a kosher cow: A Memphis fund-raising story

At rght: The original “Corky’s” logo featuring a pig next to the kosher version of the logo featuring a cow. (Photo by Corky’s)

“We asked ourselves, ‘Do we have a product here valuable enough for a large market nationally?’”

In Memphis, one answer to the ques-tion was barbecue, and one of the best

answers was Corky’s, a top-rated eatery with three branches in the city. In a town known for offering the best in barbecue, Corky’s is routinely cited in national best-of lists. It also happens to be owned by

the Pelts family, which is active in the local Jewish community.

Andy Woodman, the son-in-law of founder Don Pelts, now runs the restaurants with brother-in-law Barry Pelts. Woodman sent his kids to Margolin.

The problem, as anyone scanning the Corky’s menu would see, is that the preferred flesh among Memphis barbe-cue aficionados is of the porcine variety. You’ve got your smoked sausage and cheese plate, which Corky’s waitstaff eagerly offers as the preferred opener. You’ve got your pulled pork salad. You’ve got your pork ribs, regular and large – opt for the latter and you can sample half a rack dry, half a rack wet.

See “Kosher” on page 10

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orthodox women share tricks of the entrepreneurial trade at inaugural conference

Orthodox women networked at the first-ever conference of the Jewish Woman Entrepreneur nonprofit on May 5 in New Brunswick, NJ. (Photo from the Jewish Woman Entrepreneur)

By MICheLe ALpeRINJNS.org

Chaya Appel-Fishman hatched the idea for a network of Jewish businesswomen at age 16, when she rented a college campus and created a conglomerate of creative arts programs with 120 participants and a 20-person staff. “I wanted mentors who could give me advice and deal with my religious needs,” she recalls. “And many women reached out to me for support, asking me, ‘How did I do it?’”

Now 24 and the founder and executive director of the Jewish Woman Entrepreneur nonprofit, Appel-Fishman was the driving force behind the organization’s first conference, which took place this month. Attended by 300 Orthodox women, the May 5 conference at the Hyatt Regency in New Brunswick, NJ, had broad goals.

“This conference wasn’t meant to be just about work-life balance,” Appel-Fishman tells JNS.org. “We wanted to blend core, substantive business content as well as challenging, difficult issues and also networking to encourage women to meet and support each other.”

Starting as notes on napkins, Appel-Fishman’s idea for a women’s business network was eventually concret-ized with a website in 2009, nonprofit status and now the conference. Attendees reflected a healthy blend across the spectrum of Orthodoxy, suggests Appel-Fishman, but with more Chasidic women than expected, including 50 on a bus from Borough Park in Brooklyn. Fifteen women came under the aegis of From Sister to Sister, which supports divorcees with children.

Some women there were the heads of huge businesses, some were trying to figure out how to get a small service-oriented business off the ground and others just love to work. “They have large families and need a dual income,” Appel-Fishman says.

“Our goal is to validate women who work because they need to and those who work because they want to,” she adds.

Although Appel-Fishman is interested in a wider spectrum of Jewish women, for now her primary con-stituency is narrow. “We are focusing predominantly

on the Orthodox community – because they need us the most,” she says. “They needed an exclusively Jew-ish and kosher organization; other Jewish women have elsewhere to go.”

Although many women who attended were from the New York area, women also came from as far as California and the Midwest to be at the one-day conference.

Ellen Paxton, a newly observant woman who is founder and chief learning officer of Professional Learning Board in Minneapolis, came to meet other entrepreneurs. She hopes to expand her company, which offers online classes to largely secular education professionals to help them meet licensing and professional development requirements, to the Jewish community. “I have grown personally in my Judaism, and now it is time to grow professionally in that regard,” she says. “The more I stay true to my values, the more it supports the growth of my business.”

Other businesses and nonprofits were focused pri-marily on the Orthodox community. Elana Bergovoy of Chicago, who started the International Shidduch Group Network as a volunteer eight years ago, now

has matchmaking support groups for mothers on every continent. Drawn to the conference because “it sounded very empowering,” she is ready to take her grassroots organization to the next level. “I need to know how to be a professional,” says the former teacher. “I have to monetize it so that I get paid, be-cause my time is precious.”

Charisse Smoller of Fremont, CA, will be launching Jewish E-Cards and More when she gets her website up in August. Working as an occupational therapy assis-tant 29 hours a week to pay her business staff, Smoller came to the conference to network. “I am trying to get writers, artists and photographers, and to get out the word so people will like us on Facebook and purchase a membership,” she says.

Robin Ticker of Brooklyn, who has a background in computer science, wants to create a business to help parents who are not computer savvy put some limits on their children use the Internet and social media. “They are getting into stuff contrary to the Torah lifestyle and are overexposed to a lot of ideas,” she says.

Many attendees had existing service businesses they strive to expand. Rena Schleifer of Monsey, NY, has a doctorate in nutrition and does counseling to help people integrate healthy eating and movement into their daily lives. “I’m here to learn how to transmit that message,” she says. “If I want to make money, I have to become an entrepreneur.”

Other women were connected with nonprofits or wanted to create them. Frieda Kahn, who represents Neve Yerushalayim, a group of schools in Har Nof, Israel, that educates Jewish women of all affiliations, ages and backgrounds, says of the conference, “There hasn’t been another opportunity for Orthodox women to connect on a professional level.”

Attendee Chani Mayer of Brooklyn says she wants to start a nursery school focusing not just on babysitting, but on building self-confidence in children. M.E. Lax of Monsey would like to start a home for pre-at-risk boys who turn rebellious from ages 13-15.

See “Trade” on page 8


existence, and in imagining the ghetto’s daily function as a place where 10-20,000 Jews lived and struggled despite Nazi per-secution,” Kaiser says.

Re-imagining ghetto life through today’s electronic media has created educational opportunities and has helped to rebuild and redefine identities lost in modern main-stream Lithuanian society. “The Holocaust is largely seen as a ‘peripheral’ event in Lithuanian historiography,” says Laimis Briedis, a consultant to the Vilnius Ghetto Project. “Currently the Vilnius Ghetto plays only a minor role in Lithuanian culture, and awareness among local residents is minimal, if not, negligible.”

Briedis attributes this void in Lithua-nian cultural memory to the fact that, prior to World War II, Vilnius was primarily a

Ghetto Continued from page 1

A monument for those who died in the Vilnius Ghetto during the Holocaust. (Photo by Alma Pater)

Polish-Jewish city, with very few gentile Lithuanian residents. Between the Nazi’s expulsion and extermination of the Jew-ish population, and the five-decade long Soviet occupation that followed, ideol-ogy-driven regimes often manipulated history, denying new Vilnius residents a true understanding of their city’s heritage. By placing local Holocaust history “on the ground” and tracing events carto-graphically, Briedis is optimistic that the Vilnius Ghetto Project will enable current residents to explore the geography of the ghetto in a much more personal and in-timate way. Ideally, he says, Lithuanians will learn to acknowledge the landmark as “something less abstract, ‘foreign,’ or resigned to the pages of history books, but rather as something pertinent to their daily lives and culture.”

Speaking generally about the Holocaust, Kaiser underlines the enormous potential of the Vilnius Ghetto Project to reach beyond textbooks, providing a highly accurate and accessible tool for students of history, one that seemingly leaps off the page. “Often the histories of places like Vilnius and other Holocaust sites get reduced to mere bullet points detailing only basic statistics,” he explains. “Now, visitors to the website can explore their interests in greater depth and with more selectivity.”

Every coordinate on the online Vilnius map serves as an expandable icon. Visitors simply click on a point of interest. Flash me-dia then provide summaries of events, and navigational tools direct further reading.

Developing the interactive map was not an easy task. “Not many people have ever really cared that much where a specific build-ing was. I’ve had to compare and contrast contradictory information from diaries and photographs in order to get the stories right and make the map accurate. Sometimes there are holes in the record,” Kaiser says, admit-ting that the website should not be regarded

as the academic authority on the Vilnius Ghetto. Scholarly articles linked by the map are limited in their breadth of analysis, and sources are not always cited.

From a visitor’s perspective, however, the website aims to be user-friendly and an en-gaging introduction to the Vilnius Ghetto’s history. “Even if you aren’t familiar with how to browse an interactive map, you can still get at all the great content,” says David Heyman, managing director of Axismaps and designer of the Vilnius Ghetto online

platform. The website’s homepage offers categories that help visitors begin their tour. Sections such as “Art and Culture,” “Health and Education,” and “Resistance” steer traffic, bookended by summaries of the larger historical moment of 1941-1943, when the Vilnius Ghetto was first formed and subsequently liquidated. This underly-ing, fact-based storyline can be accessed at any time through the mapping feature, but viewers are encouraged to pursue their own tangents, enhancing the experience through multiple and interconnected perspectives of ghetto life.

The Vilnius Ghetto Project was de-veloped under the aegis of the nonprofit YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, a New York-based group whose mission is to preserve, study and teach the cultural history of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, Germany and Russia. When the project is complete, schools, museums and libraries around the world will be able to present the ghetto map as an interactive installation, supporting virtual tours on large, touch-screen monitors.

In addition to launching the website this month, Kaiser is inaugurating a Kick-starter fund-raising campaign to finance implementation of a mobile app and ad-ditional improvements to the platform. “From the beginning, our challenge was to organize the available information in a way that is intuitive, accessible and well-designed, so that people can literally tour the ghetto on their own two feet,” Kaiser says.

Jeffrey F. Barken frequently reports on Israel news topics and Jewish-interest literature. A graduate of Cornell University and the University of Baltimore’s M.F.A. in creative writing and publishing, he is the author of “This Year in Jerusalem,” a collection of stories based on his experiences living on a kibbutz in Southern Israel from 2009-2010.

Jewish Rock RadioJewish Rock Radio, http://

jewishrockradio.com, says its mission is to “strengthen Jew-

ish identity and connection in Jewish youth and young adults by providing a mass communication channel utilizing the power of music to attract, inspire, entertain and educate.” It is available through the Internet and can also be ac-cessed through mobile applications for iPhones and Android phones. There is no charge to listen to the music. Programming includes music from Jewish rock artists across the world, interviews of teens and young adults, classic Jewish rock music and performances of a capella groups from U.S. colleges and universities. The site also features a blog called “The Jew-ish Music Voice.”

Biggest Winner3•for•3 Summer Challenge

Use your love of fitness to have fun,lose weight, and win a prize!

For more information or to register contactCara at 346-6595, ext 117 or [email protected]

Program Guidelines:• Participants must take 3 classes per week (June - August)• Program begins June 3rd and ends August 29th• Advance registration is required• Fee: $15 for JCC members, $30 for non-members• Measurement & weight will be taken at the first-and final class.

A booklet tracking attendance will be kept by the instructor anda new healthy recipe will be distributed each week.

Sunday .............. Boot Camp..............12-1pm

Monday ............ Basic Zumba...........7:15-8am

Monday ............ Aqua Zumba...........6-6:45pm

Monday ............ Toning Zumba........7-7:45am

Wednesday ...... Basic Zumba...........7:30-8:30am

Thursday........... Aqua Zumba...........6-6:45pm

Thursday........... Boot Camp..............7-8pm

Zumba Classes at JCC To Choose From:

Prizes!1st Prize - $100 off JCC membership2nd Prize - 2 Personal Training Sessions3rd Prize - $25 gift card to Wegman’s

Prizes will be awardedto those who lose the

most weight and inchesduring the program.

Scranton JCC and Camp Daleville

OPEN HOUSEPARENT

ORIENTATION DAY

For more information, please contactJCC front desk at 346-6595, ext 100 or [email protected] for directions to camp.

When: Sunday, June 9 • 1 - 4pmWhere: Camp Daleville

• Bring a picnic lunch and enjoy the beautiful camp grounds! • We will also have: �Swimming in the pool (weather permitting) �Pony Rides• Meet Camp Director, Vince Kalinoski � o Ridesony RPo• Meet Camp Directectp Direp DireectCampMeet CMeet CCamp• M M

ase a contact

r, Vince KalinoskiVinVincr,r, kiinoskinoskkie Kalincencee Kali


To stay afloat, shuls merging across denominational divide

Members of the Jewish community in Canton, OH, celebrated the dedication of a new building housing the local Federation and two synagogues on July 12, 2012. (Photo by Karen Phillippi)

By BeN GITTLeSoN(JTA) – The Jews of Corpus Christi

knew a decade ago they had to act fast to save their two synagogues. With at most 1,000 Jews left in the Texas town and only 60 families making up its membership, the 60-year-old Conservative synagogue was in shaky financial shape. So in 2005, B’nai Israel Synagogue merged with Temple Beth El, a Reform shul, to form Congrega-tion Beth Israel, combining customs and sharing sacred spaces to preserve Jewish life in an area that saw its heyday around World War II.

The combined synagogue, and a small but growing number of others like it, makes a concerted effort to be inclusive despite denominational differences in liturgy and theology. Friday night services are tailored to Reform-minded members, while Sat-urday morning is conducted in the more traditional Conservative style, according to Kenneth Roseman, Beth Israel’s Reform-ordained rabbi.

Families marking a bar or bat mitzvah can choose which day and denomination they want for their celebration. Members even used furnishings from the old Con-servative synagogue in a small chapel and put up some of the old building’s stained glass in the new congregation’s social hall.

“It’s not perfect,” said Roseman, “but it works.”

Across the country, scores of syna-gogues have overcome denominational differences to merge formally, share space or otherwise collaborate, often due to financial hardships wrought by shrinking Jewish populations. Shifting demographics and a challenging eco-nomic environment have led synagogues to consider remedies that previously were unthinkable, said Rabbi David Fine, the rabbinic director of the Union for Reform Judaism’s small congrega-tions network.

“Many congregations worked hard for years to distinguish themselves,” Fine said. “It wasn’t so much ‘who are we’ but ‘who are we not?’ – looking at the other place across town. Now it’s more ‘what do we have in common?’”

That kind of thinking was evident in the merger of the Reform Temple Beth El with Congregation Eilat, a Conserva-tive synagogue in Southern California that was struggling with a significantly reduced membership. In 2010, the con-gregations merged formally with about 80 percent of Eilat’s 120 families joining the 650-family Beth El. Eilat members were granted board positions, one of Beth El’s kitchens was brought up to Conser-

vative kosher standards and differences on issues such as music on Shabbat and patrilineal descent were followed in each denomination’s services.

Today, the congregation’s three rab-bis – two Reform and one Conservative – run educational programming for the congregation at large and, on the High Holidays, deliver sermons to both the Reform and Conservative services. “I think the success of it is measured by the fact that the lines are totally blurred now,” Welland said. “We’re one congregation; we’re one community.”

Some synagogues in financial straits have stopped one step short of a full merger, opting to share facilities revamped for the needs of communities with a range of practices and beliefs. In Canton, Ohio, Jewish leaders worried about a declining population sold the Reform Temple Israel and put the local Jewish Community Center facility on the market, according to Ed Buxbaum, CEO of the Canton Jew-ish Community Federation and a former president of the Reform synagogue. Last year, Temple Israel and the Federation, which had been housed at the JCC, moved into the last remaining synagogue in town, a Conservative congregation, which renovated its building to meet the needs of all three.

The institutions now split the bills equally and hold equal shares of a non-profit corporation set up to oversee the facility. “It was not easy. It’s very dif-ficult for people who have worshiped in a single facility for 55 years and whose families have had all their lifecycle ser-vices and everything” there, Buxbaum said. “Change is difficult.”

Both Canton and Corpus Christi have received inquiries from other commu-nities contemplating similar moves. Corpus Christi has even produced a monograph detailing its merger. But not all such collaborations have resulted from declining demographics.

After Hurricane Katrina dumped 10 feet of water on New Orleans’ Congrega-tion Beth Israel, the Modern Orthodox congregation found refuge in a nearby Reform temple that had escaped the worst of the storm. Beth Israel shared a building with Congregation Gates of Prayer for several years before moving out – to a building constructed next door on land purchased from the Reform synagogue. The congregations still share a play-ground. “It’s all about relationships,” said Uri Topolosky, Beth Israel’s rabbi. “It’s all about a community that cared about itself, cared about each other and wanted to see a good thing happen.”


The day featured two speakers, a primer on network-ing, and four concurrent workshop sessions on subjects including starting a business, developing an elevator pitch, employee relations, using productivity tools, raising capi-tal and marketing with social media, and navigating the professional world.

Both speakers emphasized the demands of own-ing a business, especially one that makes it big. Chief executive office of Achieve 3000, a provider of dif-ferentiated reading instruction, Saki Dodelson is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, with four children, two grandchildren and a husband who learns Torah by day rather than holding a traditional job. She urged the women at the conference to dream big, start small, hire people they trust and, whenever something is working, scale it up fast.

Sometimes things like home-cooked dinners go when women begin full-time jobs. When a teacher reported to Dodelson that her daughter had said that in Decem-ber there were no suppers at home, Dodelson told her, “Yes, that’s true, however, we’re going to have supper in May.” At the same time she noted that when a child is sick, she has had to drop a business trip or say no to “an amazing deal.”

Talia Mashiach, a 36-year-old mother of five who married right after high school, today runs Eved, a com-pany that automates the buying and selling necessary for meetings and events. The company has tripled its revenues three years in a row, now processing more than $80 million in transactions.

A super achiever, Mashiach graduated at the top of her business class at Loyola University, despite having two children in the process. She started her first real business, Tech Closeouts, to earn money to add an addition to her house while staying home with her children. When she got tired of being on the phone all day selling discounted computers, she decided to move on to something she was more passionate about – businesses through technology. That led to Eved.

Today, Eved is at a point where Mashiach can take off Fridays and have a fresh, homemade meal ready for Shabbat. Mashiach says, “We are so fortunate to have Torah as our guide; my exposure to the outside world has made me understand and appreciate that so much more.”

At the same time, Mashiach feels committed to her role as a businesswoman, feeling that she is following her God-given talents. “Hashem gives us special gifts; it is our duty to make use of them,” she says.

Trade Continued from page 5

Israeli students ran by a bomb shelter at an elementary school in the coastal city of Ashkelon on March 18, 2012. (Photo by Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90/JTA)

ISrAeL unDer THe rADAr

Bomb shelter app, ice city in Jerusalem, Ang Lee’s TV pilotBy MARCy oSTeR

JERUSALEM (JTA) – Here are some stories out of Israel that you may have missed:A BeTTeR BoMB SheLTeR App

An app that helps Israelis locate the nearest bomb shelter was updated in response to the civil war in Syria. The Merkhav Mugan app had been launched six months ago for south-ern Israelis being bombarded by rockets from the Gaza Strip. Now, with the Syrian unrest spilling over the border into northern Israel, the app will include all secure bomb shelters and areas throughout Israel, the Tazpit News Agency reported. In addition, anyone can add information about shelters and secure spaces that do not appear on the app. The GPS-based app, which was developed by the Israeli smartphone application development company i-Apps, also helps users find the fastest route to a bomb shelter, according to Tazpit.LIFe BehINd The STeThoSCope

Move over “Grey’s Anatomy,” an Israeli reality series set in a Tel Aviv hospital is providing a look at life through the eyes of overworked and overtired doctors. “Ichilov” follows the doctors from several wards at Ichilov Hospital as they care for patients. The series, which took two years to film, is airing on the Yes Doco channel, a satellite television station. “The idea was to tell a story through doctors’ eyes. A story experienced over their shoulders, through their eyes, through their experiences,” Israeli filmmaker Ruthie Shatz told Haaretz. “We wanted to show what it’s like to be a surgeon and the burden one carries after picking inside human bodies all day long. One must deal with these changes, between looking a person in the eye and being human and compassionate and being focused enough to save his live. If you’re not the best at this job, you cannot continue doing it.” Shatz and her partner, movie director Adi Barash, decided to tackle the documentary series after Shatz and her mother were patients at Ichilov Hospital. Shatz’s mother had cancer and died, while Shatz suffered from complica-tions of pregnancy.

ICe CITy IS wAy CooL IN JeRUSALeMJerusalemites and visitors to the city had a place to

chill in April. The Jerusalem Ice City Festival, housed in the city’s old train station, featured an ice world with sculptures, a bar, and large-scale models of Jerusalem and landmarks of other world cities. Fairy tales and Bible stories also were illustrated in ice. The second an-nual festival, which closed at the end of April following a run of more than two months, was part of a cultural exchange with China. The Great Wall of China was also prominently featured in the display, according to Ynet. Two million pounds of ice were used to create the ice city using special equipment brought from China. It took 30 people to make the displays. With temperatures in Jeru-salem rising in recent weeks to the 90s, it’s a wonder the ice city didn’t melt away.ANG Lee doING TV

Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee will tackle television for the first time, directing a pilot for a show written by the Israeli writer who created the popular drama “Homeland.” Gidi Raff’s pilot for

“Tyrant,” about an American family caught up in a Middle East country, was picked up by the FX cable channel. FX announced recently that Lee will direct the pilot this summer. It is Lee’s first project since the “Life of Pi,” Reuters reported – Lee won the Oscar for best director. The Israeli TV network Keshet is collaborating on the series.New CheVy UNweLCoMe IN ISRAeL

The new Chevy SS is off-limits here because of its name. The Nazi Schutzstaffel, or SS, was a German paramilitary group during World War II. SS in the case of the General Motors’ car stands for Super Sport. According to the Hebrew daily Yediot Achronot, the General Motors model will not be imported to Israel due to Jewish sensibilities. Chevrolet spokes-man Michael Albano told FoxNews.com that “Chevrolet has no plans to export the SS to Israel.” So there.

Dear Friend of The Reporter,

Each year at this time the Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania calls upon members of our community to assist in de-fraying the expense of issuing our regional Jewish newspaper, The Reporter.

The newspaper is delivered twice of month (except for December and July which are single issue months) to each and every identifiable Jewish home in North-eastern Pennsylvania.

As the primary Jewish newspaper of our region, we have tried to produce a quality publication for you that offers our reader-ship something on everything-from opinions and columns on controversial issues that affect our people and our times, to publicity for the events of our affiliated agencies and orga-nizations to life cycle events, teen columns, personality profiles, letters to the editor, the Jewish community calendar and other

columns that cover everything from food to entertainment.

The Federation assumes the financial respon-sibility for funding the enterprise at a cost of $26,400 per year and asks only that we

undertake a small letter writing mail campaign to our recipi-

ents in the hope of raising $10,000 from our reader-ship to alleviate a share of that responsibility.

We would be grateful if you would care enough to take the time to make a donation for our efforts in bringing The Reporter to

your door.

As always, your comments, opin-ions and suggestions are always

welcome.

With best wishes,Mark Silverberg, Executive Director

Jewish Federation of NE Pennsylvania601 Jefferson Avenue

Scranton, PA 18510

Friends of The Reporter

I WILL SUPPORT CONTINUATION OF OUR EXPANDED FEDERATION REPORTER BY CONTRIBUTING

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Notice to our Pocono ReadersNotice to our Pocono Readers911 Emergency Management Services has been updating mailing addresses in Monroe County and Lehman Townships in Pike County. Please don't forget to notify the Federation so you

will continue to receive The Reporter.Thanks,

Mark Silverberg, Executive DirectorJewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania


Mark Silverberg, executive director of the Jewish Federation of NortheasternPennsylvania, has announced that the Federation will once again join the thousandsof marchers in the annual Celebrate Israel Parade, this year on Sunday June 2, 2013.

The theme of this year’s parade is PICTURE ISRAEL (THE ART AND THE CRAFT).In keeping with the theme, our Federation’s banner will reflect the mosaic of diversity

in the Jewish population of the State of Israel. We thank Becky Schastey, our Federation webmaster, for creating a photographic mosaic superimposed over the flag of Israel.

Cost to participate in this always exciting program is only $10.00 per person witha family cap of $25.00. This covers snacks, the official parade T-shirt and, of course,

a day trip to New York City & a stop in Teaneck, N.J. for shopping & dinner.

It’s Parade Time!

Celebrate Israel’s 65th BirthdayJoin the Jewish Federation as we march along New York’s Fifth Avenue in the

Celebrate Israel Parade • Sunday June 2, 2013Pick up points- Scranton JCC, Budget Inn and Suites Stroudsburg

(Leave Scranton JCC – 8:30 AM and pick-up in Stroudsburg 9:15 AM)

Cost - $10.00 per person with a $25.00 family cap.Includes trip to NY, snack on the bus, official parade T-shirt.

As always, we will stop in Teaneck, NJ after the paradefor shopping and dining in kosher establishments.

Call/email with your reservation to Dassy Ganz 961-2300 x2, [email protected]

We Are Israel

THE REPORTER ■ MAY 23, 201310 D’vAr TOrAH

And in case you missed the point, atop the menu, grinning from under a chef’s hat, is Corky himself, a pig. (Legend has it that Don Pelts was an unreconstructed fan of the 1980s film “Porky’s.”)

Dena Wruble, the Margolin parent who came up with the Corky’s idea, was undaunted by the prevalence of pig on the menu. Sometime in the 2000s, she recalled, Don Pelts purchased a new smoker and before its inaugural use on a pig, lent it to the school for a brisket barbecue. Perhaps that could be replicated?

A new smoker can cost $10,000 – that wasn’t in the off-ing. Woodman had another idea: Kosher a smoker already in use and donate it to the school permanently. Woodman committed the koshering to film.

“Next time you’re in town, you’ll have to see it, it’s pretty funny,” he said in a phone interview. “We lit it up with Sterno and put wood in the chamber. We had to get it up to 700 degrees. It almost melted. The racks did melt. We had to buy a new set of racks.”

The smoker ready, the Parents Committee set about seeking kosher brisket. They exhausted a supply in St. Louis and had to call Atlanta for more. For sales, they put out the word through social media; orders came in from as far afield as Los Angeles, New Jersey and Toronto. One buyer made inquiries about how best to pack the meat for an Israel trip.

The smoking and preparation took place on campus, with Corky’s staff in place. Perl recalled the nonplussed reac-tion of the religion reporter for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, who arrived on campus to cover an unrelated story and saw a truck plastered with a big smiling pig.

“I almost felt bad having that in my driveway,” Perl said. “Almost.”

In honor of the occasion, Woodman converted the Corky figure to a cow and plastered a K on his chef’s hat. No one batted an eye, Woodman and Perl said; Memphians are easygoing folk, including the 8,000 Jews among them. “I know, it’s funny, a Jewish family owns a pork barbecue place,” he said. “But everyone has always been extremely welcoming.”

In any case, the kosher cow is familiar to Memphis Jews from the occasional Jewish event catered by the family-

By RABBI AARoN SLoNIM, dIReCToR, ChABAd CeNTeR, BINGhAMToN, Ny

BeHa’alotecha, Numbers 8:1-12:16One of the most fascinating features of the Torah is the

utter lack of pretension found in the accounts concerning its pivotal characters. In fact, there is no person described or mentioned in our Torah who is seen as free of fault, as complete or perfect.

In this parasha, we find one of our greatest heroines and prophetesses, Miriam, involved in a most common sin, that of lashon hara, gossip or slander. The subject of her comments is her older brother, Moses. The com-mentators provide reasons and rationale for her motives, but it is clear that her action is deemed a sin in the eyes of God. Both she and Aaron, with whom she was speaking, are strongly chastised by God and she is stricken with the biblical punishment for lashon hara, leprosy.

Understanding what Miriam said and why she said it is interesting, but far less so than Moshe’s reaction, or more correctly, lack thereof. (The conversation between Miriam and Aaron had been held in Moshe’s presence, which our sages point out is indicative of their pure, rather than, malicious intent.) The Torah records no response what-ever on the part of Moshe, although he surely could have mustered a more than adequate rebuttal to their talk. As if anticipating the question, even the ire of the reader, the Torah makes a spectacular declaration: “Moses was very humble, more so than any man on the face of the earth.” (Numbers 12:3)

In order to properly understand this statement, one must first appreciate some facts about this man called Moses, or Moshe:

� He was chosen to lead the Jews out of the land of Egypt and bring them to the foot of Sinai.

� He was chosen to receive the Torah at Sinai, ascending the mountain unto heaven for 40 days and 40 nights, dur-ing which time God taught him the Torah in its entirety. In fact, we refer to the Bible as the Five Books of Moses, or Torat Moshe.

� He was the one to, and of whom, God declared, “They will believe in you forever.” (Exodus 19:9)

� He was the only mortal who merited a vision of the Divine Glory to some degree. As it is stated, “A man cannot have a vision of me and still exist. God then said, ‘I have a special place where you can stand on the rocky mountain. When my glory passes by, I will place you in a crevice… and you will have a vision of what follows from my existence.’” (Exodus 33:20-23)

Moshe’s humilityIn this parasha, we learn that Moses communicated with

God in a medium unknown to and impossible to achieve by any other prophet in the annals of Jewish history. In the verses containing the rebuke of Miriam and Aaron we read, “God said, ‘Listen carefully to my words. If someone among you experiences Divine prophecy, then when I make myself known to him in a vision, I will speak to him in a dream. This is not true of my servant Moses, who is like a trusted servant throughout my house. With him I speak face to face, in a vision not containing allegory, so that he sees a true picture of God. How can you not be afraid to speak against My servant Moses?’”(Numbers 12:6-8) The Sifrei comments that Moses was actually able to initiate communication with God at any time that he wished. Add to the above the mundane facts that include Moshe’s inesti-mable wealth, his legendary physical prowess, and majestic countenance and bearing. The obvious question is how is it possible for one as great as Moses to truly be humble, to possess humility characterized by God as unrivaled?

The answer lies in understanding how Moses viewed himself. More than anyone else, Moses understood that “Yours, oh God, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty; for all that is in heaven and on earth is yours; Yours, God, is the rulership and You are exalted as head above all.” (Chronicles 29:11)

Moshe was aware of his greatness, of the fact that he was a phenomenon amongst men with no replica. His humility, however, was just as genuine and deep, for it stemmed from his essence and was born of this very greatness. He understood, and more importantly, believed, with every fiber of his being, that his magnitude was sourced in something beyond himself. It was a gift and an awesome charge granted to him from the Almighty. Further, he reckoned, had God conferred this bounty upon another, he or she may have brought those gifts to fruition with greater intensity and fuller dimension. It was this “world view” that earned him the appellation anav, “modest man.”

Are we capable of Moshe’s humility? Clearly not; the Bible rules out that possibility. However, might we learn from Moshe just a little bit? Absolutely, yes. We are quite capable of remembering where everything we have comes from and where we fit in the grand scheme of things. We, too, can learn to swallow a ready rebuttal with our pride; to ignore lashon hara about ourselves, or even hear it in a different way.

These are valuable lessons to learn, important things to remember – and a reminder of the very best way to make the world we live in a more friendly and peaceful place.

kosher Continued from page 4

owned business. “Some of the promotions also had a line through the pig,” Woodman said. The restaurant’s prize-winning sauce is certified kosher.

Perl said replicating Corky’s pork-smoking techniques on brisket fit into a longstanding tradition. “We Jews have learned how to imitate every other part of [secular] life, so why not this, too?” he asked.

In the end, the enterprise brought in $100,000 in rev-enue, netting $20,000 for the school’s sorely needed rehab. “Someone came in during the smoking,” Perl recalled. “He said, ‘Your school doesn’t look too good, but it sure smells good.’”

Jewish harlem walking TourThe Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy will

hold a “Jewish Harlem Walking Tour” on Sunday, June 23. Marty Shore, an urban historian, will discuss sites of Jewish religious life in the urban

settlement of Harlem, once the second largest Jewish commu-nity in the United States. In 1917, it was home to more than 175,000 Jews. Among the exteriors to be discussed are the Ethiopian Hebrew Synagogue (called “The Commandment Keepers”), Temple Israel of Harlem, Congregation Shaarei Zedek and the Oheb Zedek Synagogue, which was home to Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt in the 1910s-1920s.

The tour will being at 10:45 am and last approximately three hours. Participants will meet at the northeast corner of Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. and 125th Street, in front of the statue of Adam Clayton Powell. The cost is $18 for adults and $16 for seniors and students. There is an additional charge of $2 additional day of tour. To sign up for the tour, visit www.nycjewishtours.org/calendar.htm#041413 or contact LESJC at 212-374-4100 or [email protected].

ABINGTON TORAH CENTER Rabbi Dovid SaksPresident: Richard RuttaJewish Heritage Connection108 North Abington Rd., Clarks Summit, PA 18411570-346-1321 • Website: www.jewishheritageconnection.orgSunday morning services at 8:30 amCall for other scheduled services throughout the week.

BETH SHALOM CONGREGATIONRabbi Yisroel Brotsky1025 Vine St., Scranton, PA 18510, (corner of Vine & Clay Ave.)570-346-0502 • fax: 570-346-8800Weekday – Shacharit: Sun 8 am; Mon, Thurs. & Rosh Chodesh, 6:30 am; Tue, Wed & Fri, 6:45 am; Sat & Holidays, 8:45 am. Mincha during the week is approx. 10 minutes before sunset, followed by Maariv.

BICHOR CHOLEM CONGREGATION/ CHABAD OF THE ABINGTONSRabbi Benny RapoportPresident: Richard I. Schwartz216 Miller Road, Waverly, PA 18471570-587-3300 • Website: www.JewishNEPA.comSaturday morning Shabbat Service 9:30 am.Call or visit us online for our bi-weekly schedule

CHABAD LUBAVITCH OF THE POCONOSRabbi Mendel Bendet570-420-8655 • Website: www.chabadpoconos.comPlease contact us for schedules and locations. CONGREGATION BETH ISRAELAffiliation: Union for Reform JudaismRabbi Allan L. SmithPresident: Henry M. SkierContact Person: Ben Schnessel, Esq. (570) 222-3020615 Court Street, Honesdale, PA 18431570-253-2222 • fax: 570-226-1105

CONGREGATION B’NAI HARIMAffiliation: Union for Reform JudaismRabbi Peg KershenbaumPresident: Phyllis MillerP.O. Box 757 Sullivan Rd., Pocono Pines, PA 18350(located at RT 940 and Pocono Crest Rd at Sullivan Trail 570-646-0100 • Website: www.bnaiharimpoconos.org Shabbat Morning Services, 10 am – noon; every other Saturday Potluck Shabbat Dinner with blessings and program of varying topics, one Friday every month – call for schedule.

JEWISH FELLOWSHIP OFHEMLOCK FARMSRabbi Steve NathanPresident: Steve NattForest Drive 1516 Hemlock Farms, Lords Valley, PA 18428570-775-7497 • E-Mail: [email protected] evening Shabbat service 7:30 pm, Saturday morning Shabbat Service 9:30 am.

MACHZIKEH HADAS SYNAGOGUERabbi Mordechai FinePresident: Dr. Shaya Barax600 Monroe Ave., Scranton, PA 18510570-342-6271

OHEV ZEDEK CONGREGATIONRabbi Mordechai Fine1432 Mulberry St, Scranton, PA 18510Contact person: Michael Mellner - 570-343-3183

TEMPLE HESEDUnion of Reform JudaismRabbi Daniel J. SwartzPresident: Eric Weinberg 1 Knox Street, Scranton, PA 18505, (off Lake Scranton Rd.)570-344-7201Friday evening Shabbat, 8 pm;Saturday morning Shabbat, 11:15 am

TEMPLE ISRAEL OF DUNMOREPresident: Isadore Steckel515 East Drinker St., Dunmore, PA 18512Saturday morning Shabbat 7:30 am; also services for Yizkor

TEMPLE ISRAEL OF THE POCONOSAffiliation: United Synagogue of Conservative JudaismRabbi Baruch MelmanPresident: Suzanne TremperContact person: Art Glantz 570-424-7876711 Wallace St., Stroudsburg, PA, 18360(one block off Rte. 191 (5th Street) at Avenue A)570-421-8781 • Website: www.templeisraelofthepoconos.orgE-Mail: [email protected] evening Shabbat, 8pm; Saturday morning Shabbat, 9 am

TEMPLE ISRAEL OF SCRANTONAffiliation: United Synagogue of Conservative JudaismRabbi Moshe SaksPresident: Michael Mardo918 East Gibson St., Scranton, PA, 18510(located at the corner of Gibson & Monroe Sts.)570-342-0350 Fax: 570-342-7250 • E-Mail: [email protected], 8 am; Mon & Thurs, 7:15 am; Tue, Wed & Fri, 7:25 am;Rosh Hodesh & Chagim weekdays, 7 am; Shabbat Morning Service, 8:45 am; evening services: Sun – Thurs, 5:45 pm; Friday Shabbat and Saturday Havdalah services, call for times.



Jews and sports

By dAVId hoLzeL(Washington Jewish Week) – “I think

Hank Greenberg was the great Ameri-can hero,” Washington filmmaker Aviva Kempner says. “What he did on Yom Kippur. What he faced. He was our Jackie Robinson.”

Thirteen years after the debut of “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg,” her docu-mentary about the baseball great, Kempner is rereleasing the film on DVD – including an additional two hours of interviews that didn’t make the original cut.

Greenberg, known to Jewish fans as the Detroit Tigers’ power hitter who sat out an important game during the 1934 pennant race because it fell on Yom Kippur, scored achievements rivaling those of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Greenberg served in World War II and, after his retirement from play-ing, went on to be an owner-manager of the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox. He faced antisemitism throughout his playing career.

The DVD of “extras” includes players who were contemporaries of Greenberg’s talking about him and how baseball used to be. In one humorous juxtaposition, Kempner follows a clip of a spirited argument for

By BeN SALeSTEL AVIV (JTA) – Pascale Bercovitch

has a firm handshake and a ready smile. She’s hard to keep up with as she takes an elevator to a café on the ground floor of her gym in northern Tel Aviv and talks about her hopes to compete in 2016 in Rio De Janeiro. It’s easy to forget that she’s 45 years old and has no legs.

“I love to find my limit and push it, to succeed more than I did yesterday,” Ber-covitch told JTA. “What interests me is the journey.”

For Bercovitch, who has represented Israel as a rower and handcyclist in the Summer Paralympics, the journey has been long, spanning three decades, three sports and two countries. But she has never stopped competing, even after a gruesome accident left her without her legs at age 17.

Born and raised in a suburb of Paris, Bercovitch started training as a gymnast at age 10. In high school, she began training for competitions and also became a dancer. Those plans came to an abrupt end one morning in 1985 when Bercovitch, late for school and rushing to catch a departing train, got caught under its wheels. Both of her legs had to be amputated.

“What hurt the most was that I couldn’t dance and I couldn’t do floor gymnastics, couldn’t jump, couldn’t run,” she said. “It was inconceivable. I couldn’t live like that.”

The injury, though, didn’t stop her from fulfilling another dream – moving to Israel,

At r ight: Pascale Bercovitch, an Israeli h a n d c y c l i s t w h o competed in the 2012 London Paralympics, has overcome the loss of her legs to become a world-class athlete. (Photo courtesy Pascale Bercovitch)

Israeli paralympian pascale Bercovitch eyes 2016 Games in Rio

where she felt she could “build a small state” and “do something new and good.” She went on to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces, where she became one of the first volunteers in a wheelchair.

“I understood that there was no other choice than to fulfill your dreams,” she said. “Life can end in an instant. What’s important is to savor every moment. It didn’t matter how.”

Once in Israel, Bercovitch started swim-ming as part of her rehabilitation and was invited to join the Israeli national team leading up to the 1992 Paralympics in Barcelona. It took her until 2008, though, to make it to the Games.

Without a full-time salary, she had to quit the 1992 team. For nearly the next two decades she worked as a journalist and docu-mentarian, producing “Three-Hundredths of a Second,” an award-winning film on the 2000 Israeli Paralympic delegation to

Athens.Eight years later, in Beijing, she joined

the delegation for a different sport – rowing – which allowed her to take advantage of her arm strength. Her passion for athletics, she said, made it possible to overcome the 16-year gap between Games.

“It’s a virus that I have inside me,” said Bercovitch, who placed eighth in 2008. “Sometimes it’s dormant and sometimes it wakes up. When there’s the opportunity, you don’t have to tell me twice.”

Since 2008, Bercovitch has split her time between training, writing and motivational speaking, which she’s done since she was a 19-year-old soldier. On May 8, she spoke at the Ruderman Family Foundation’s Advance Conference in New York, which focused on how the Jewish community ap-proaches disabilities.

“I come from my own small corner,” Bercovitch said. “I don’t come as an expert.

I come to shine a light on things people know. I can give people strength.”

Amid competitions and conferences, Bercovitch finds time for two daughters, 3 and 11. Though she wakes up at 5 am daily to work and train for as long as five hours at a stretch, she makes sure to be home by 4 pm, when her children return from school.

“She’s a very moral person,” said her coach, Oz Dudai, who began training with her last year. “She has a lot of courage and fearlessness. She does things full strength. No one can stop her.”

For the 2012 London Games, Bercovitch tried a new sport, handcycling, and placed fifth. In a recent international competition, she had improved to second and hopes to be on the podium in Rio de Janeiro three years from now.

Dudai said that even qualifying for the team would be difficult for a 45-year-old. “A woman like Pascale can make the Olym-pics,” he said.

After surviving her accident and return-ing to competition after a 16-year break, age is no obstacle for Bercovitch. “I feel that everyone is with me when I represent Israel,” she said. “Whenever I go to the Olympics, I get letters in the mail. People bring me flowers.”

Win or lose, though, Bercovitch says as long as she’s in the game, she’s happy. “I understood from a young age that I have an athletic spirit,” she said. “You don’t have to do dance or gymnastics. It doesn’t matter what the sport is.”

hank Greenberg in extra inningswhy being from the South makes a better player with a clip of an equally confident assertion that being in the North makes a better player. And she weaves throughout the CD an audio interview with Red Sox outfielder Ted Williams.

There are insights from baseball broad-casters and writers such as Washington’s Shirley Povich. And the fans have their say: Lawyer Alan Dershowitz tells how he hid his baseball glove behind his Talmud in school. Detroit-born brothers Sen. Carl Levin and Rep. Sander Levin talk about their passion for the game and reverence for Greenberg. Joanne Kinney, identified as a “batgirl,” describes how she convinced Greenberg to do her math homework for her.

Kempner spoke about Greenberg, the second time around:

Washington Jewish Week: What explains the fact that Hank Greenberg is still a household name?

Kempner: He was a very powerful hitter. He almost broke Babe Ruth’s record. He stood up to adversity. He fought in war. And our heroes in Judaism are the stories we keep repeating. He taught America that he could be true to his religion, even in a pennant race.

WJW: What are the highlights of the extras for you?

K: Who else could get Ted Williams, the great Hall of Famer, and Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsberg in the same DVD extras? I’m pretty proud of that. Also, Greenberg made all these great innovations in baseball, like taking mitts. [Before the practice changed, players dropped their mitts in the field rather than taking them back to the dugout.] I can’t imagine what that was about. Also, there’s

more of Shirley Povich, [actor] Walter Mat-thau, Senator [Carl] Levin and his brother, Congressman Sander Levin.

WJW: You originally jumped on the idea for a documentary on Hank Greenberg because he was Jewish and played for your hometown team, the Detroit Tigers. Were you also a baseball fan?

K: My dad always talked about him. Every Yom Kippur my dad would talk about

See “Greenberg” on page 12

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how Hank Greenberg hadn’t played on Yom Kippur ‘34. I grew up thinking Hank Greenberg was part of Kol Nidre services. And another thing – I was tired of always seeing these nebbishes, these nerds on the screen. When Green-berg died [in 1986], I said this is a Jewish hero I grew up with – a 6-foot-4, strapping Jewish male. Of course I had my crushes in baseball. So I thought I’ve got to do it, but I’ve got to do it from the point of view of the fans. The worshiping of him was amazing. And luckily he lived up to the image.

WJW: Has your thinking on Greenberg changed?K: No. Can you imagine what it is to go every day to

work and have people yell and scream names to you? It’s important for people to see what he faced – and in America. Maybe we can be a little more sympathetic to the other in this country, to immigrants or to people who don’t look exactly like us or practice their religion like us.

WJW: What I think one of his greatest significances is in ‘34 is not playing on Yom Kippur. He really taught America what our holiest day was. And how the Supreme Court still has the Hank Greenberg model, according to Justice Ginsburg. They won’t have cases argued on Yom Kippur in case there’s a Jewish lawyer. She said the justices can take off, but what if it’s a lawyer?

WJW: Do you think he really did a girl’s math homework for three months? I wasn’t sure what to make of that.

K: Absolutely. She swears by it. That was when you had access. There was that other man who followed Greenberg around at the airport and wound up sitting next to him on the plane. It’s just a different era.

WJW: I was amused at the section in the interviews where the veteran players are griping: about Astroturf, about the balls and bats players use now, about baseball today as showbiz.

K: It was the golden age of baseball. Games were played during the day. There was more pure hitting. It wasn’t being a multimillionaire superstar. It was for the love of the game. I’m not saying that players today don’t love the game. What I’m saying is the heroes of the game are the ones who played back then.

WJW: Greenberg could have moved into showbiz, become a superstar, if he was playing today, don’t you think?

K: I think he did exactly what he wanted to – he went into management. He loved the game so much. And there were great innovations like the scoreboard, hiring African-Americans in the league. I don’t think he was a showy man in that way but, yeah, he could have done pretty much anything he wanted to.

WJW: Are you working on a new film?K: I’m working on a film about the great philanthropist

Julius Rosenwald, the head of Sears Roebuck. One hundred years ago he gave away $62 million to a little over 5,000 schools for African-Americans, and gave to thousands of African-American artists and scholars. I think it’s a great philanthropy story, and an unknown story between blacks and Jews.

For information about the film, go to hankgreenbergfilm.org.)

Greenberg Continued from page 11

For musicians, performing in Israel makes a statement

Madonna performed in Tel Aviv on May 31, 2012. (Photo from MDNA)

By BINyAMIN kAGedANJNS.org

Since the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement got its start in 2005, the decision to schedule an appear-ance in Israel has been become a difficult one for popular recording artists. American and British performers who announce plans to stop in Tel Aviv or Ramat Gan as part of their world tour quickly come under fire from blogs, Facebook groups and other BDS outlets that call upon them to immediately cancel these shows.

Some artists in recent years have complied with the BDS movement’s demands or even adopted its Israel-as-apartheid discourse. The most recent incident involved Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters, whose April 30 event at New York City’s 92nd Street Y, “A Conversation With Rogers Waters,” was canceled following opposi-tion efforts from the pro-Israel community. Waters last fall accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid” and “international crimes” in an address at the United Nations, and he also spearheaded efforts to boycott an Israel Philharmonic Orchestra performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Last November, Stevie Wonder backed out of a per-formance at the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces gala in Los Angeles, following a BDS petition that garnered more than 4,600 signatures and a recommendation from the U.N.to withdraw.

Yet, despite the potential of BDS backlash, many of the biggest acts in English-language music have played for Israeli audiences over the last decade. Paul McCartney performed in Tel Aviv in 2008, despite not only condemnation from boycott advocates, but also a publicized death threat from an Islamic militant in Lebanon. The Black Eyed Peas came to Israel in 2006. Aerosmith and Leonard Cohen performed in Israel in 2009, Elton John and Metallica both played Tel Aviv in 2010, and Paul Simon and Justin Bieber came to the Jewish state in 2011.

Most recently, 2012 saw Israel host to Madonna, Lady Gaga, Metallica, Rihanna, Chris Cornell, Linkin Park and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Israeli fans, meanwhile, have shown themselves to be a force to reckoned with. In

an ironic twist, Israeli Metallica devotees boycotted an upcoming appearance in Tel Aviv, protesting high ticket prices, and succeeded in persuading the band to intervene with concert promoters.

For some artists, resisting the pressure to divest from Israel means simply not responding to the blogs and on-line petitions. Others have gone a step further by vocally defending their choice. Elton John, whose 2010 concert came in the wake of the Gaza flotilla incident, affirmed on stage to his adoring audience that music is the wrong place for playing politics. “Musicians spread love and peace, bringing people together,” he said. “That’s what we do. We don’t cherry-pick our conscience.”

John’s statement was both one of support for Israelis and a jibe aimed at several popular musicians who had recently canceled tour dates in Israel, such as Santana, the Pixies and Elvis Costello. Costello, announcing his decision to cancel on his official website, said his decision to pull out was “a matter of instinct and conscience.”

Like John, others in the music world have answered protests by citing the unique ability of art to unify people across class and culture. Sharon Osborne said in a video released to reporters ahead of a 2010 concert that she and Ozzy were proud to be playing in Israel. “Music goes

beyond politics because it is the international language of the world,” she said.

Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson, in response to calls for the band to cancel its 2010 Israel concert series, wrote on the band’s website that being told to boycott Israel “serves to strengthen my resolve that some degree of peace and understanding will result from my and other artists’ professional and humble efforts in such places.”

In an effort to harness and publicize the opinions of more Israel-friendly celebrities like these, a group of music and film executives and industry workers launched the Creative Community for Peace in 2011.

See “Musicians” on page 14

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newS In brIeF FrOM ISrAeLFrom JTA

Netanyahu reassures on Israel’s readiness for Syrian threatIsrael is ready for “any scenario” in Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said,

amid reports that Syria will hit Tel Aviv if Israel launches another raid on Syrian soil. “We are following developments [in Syria] closely and are readying for any scenario,” Netan-yahu said on May 19 at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting. Netanyahu’s comments followed a report in the Sunday Times of Britain that Syria has put its most advanced mis-siles, the Syrian-made Tishreen, or M-600 rockets, on stand-by with orders to hit Tel Aviv if Israel strikes again on Syrian soil. Earlier in May, two alleged Israeli airstrikes on Syrian military sites reportedly targeted long-range missiles in transit from Iran to Hezbollah. “The Israeli government is working responsibly and with determination and sagacity in order to ensure the supreme interest of the state of Israel... the security of Israeli citizens in keeping with the policy that we have set to – as much as possible – prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah and to other terrorist elements, “ Netanyahu said on May 19. Meanwhile, an unnamed senior Israeli official told The New York Times the week of May 17 that Israel was considering additional military strikes to prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah and that Israel would retaliate against attacks by Syria or its proxies. On May 17, Amos Gilad, the Israeli Defense Ministry’s director of policy and political-military affairs, said Syrian President Bashar Assad is “acting responsibly” when it comes to Israel. “Assad controls the weapons systems in his country, acts responsibly in everything related to Israel and understands the power facing him,” Gilad said during an interview with Israel Radio. Gilad also said that Israel is deliberately not acting against Assad’s regime and that any actions it may take in Syria are in self-defense. “Syria has had some of its parts torn off it” but it is “a violent entity with many weapons,” he said. On May 17, Lebanese media reported that several Israel Air Force warplanes were cruising Lebanese airspace at a low altitude. The planes were spotted over Hezbollah strongholds including Bint Jbel, Marj Ayoun and Nabatiya in the country’s south.No evidence that Mohammed al-dura died, Israel says

Claims that Israeli troops in 2000 killed the Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura are “base-less,” an Israeli government committee concluded. The panel of experts made the statement in its 36-page report presented on May 19 – Israel’s most comprehensive official response to a disputed video shot by a French television station. According to the report, “there are many signs” that the boy wasn’t even shot. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had tasked the committee last year to look into “the al-Dura affair.” France 2 said the video, which aired on Sept. 30, 2000, showed al-Dura being killed by Israeli soldiers. The video became the emblematic image of the second intifada, and sparked anti-Israel riots and at-tacks on Israeli and Jews across the world. Narrated by France 2 reporter Charles Enderlin, the 55-second video shows a boy and a man, later identified as Jalal al-Dura and his son, Mohammed, crouching behind a barrel, supposedly under gunfire near Netzarim in the Gaza Strip. Enderlin said in his narration that the fire “came from the Israeli position” and that the boy was shot dead. But the Israeli committee in its report said “there are many signs” that the man and the boy “were not hit by bullets at all.” Unaired raw footage showed “the boy was alive” when the France 2 camera stopped recording, according to the report, which also cited the lack of blood stains at the scene, among other findings. Among other experts, the

report contains testimonies by Dr. Ricardo Nachman, deputy director of Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv, and Yehuda David, a French-Israeli physician who claimed that scars presented by Jalal al-Dura as evidence of Israeli violence in 2000 actually had been incurred eight years earlier at the hands of Hamas. “Question marks exist about almost every aspect of the France 2 report, and many conflicting and false statements have emerged in the testimony of local cameraman of the station, Talal abu-Rahma, who is the main and virtually sole source of the France 2 reportage,” the committee’s report said. The report said France 2 “should have retracted its unequivocal statements that the boy was targeted by Israeli fire and that the film shows his death and apologize for the misleading editing, as well as clarify that the station relied exclusively of its Gaza reporter.” Since the video’s release, experts from at least four countries have disputed its veracity, including Philippe Karsenty, a media analyst and the Jewish deputy mayor of the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, who called the video a hoax. Enderlin has sued Karsenty for libel, and the latest ruling in their protracted legal fight is expected to be announced the week of May 20. “The ruling has already been handed down, so the Israeli report will not influence the ruling one way or another,” Karsenty, who for years has urged Israel to unambiguously and officially call the video a hoax, told JTA. “Still, it is not too late because the bigger picture is that we are fighting for the truth.” He added, “This is not a victory for me, but a victory for Israel.” Israel initially assumed responsibility for the incident, but a later military probe found any bullets likely came from Palestinian gunmen who exchanged fire with Israeli soldiers on the day al-Dura was allegedly shot. Upon receiving the report, Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of intelligence, international relations and strategic affairs, said the video was “a blood libel against the state of Israel. The report on French television was false.” And Netanyahu said that “focusing on this case is important” because “it exemplifies the mendacious campaign of delegitimization we keep experiencing against Israel.”homesh settlement’s land going back to palestinian owners

The land on which the northern West Bank settlement of Homesh was built will be re-turned to its Palestinian owners. Israel’s Justice Ministry in mid-May informed the nation’s Supreme Court that the original 1978 military order seizing the land for an army base that was never built would be rescinded and the land returned to its owners. Palestinian land-owners in 2010 filed a petition with the Supreme Court to have the land returned to them. Homesh was one of four West Bank settlements evacuated in August 2005 along with the settlements in Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip. The homes in Homesh were destroyed, but the land was kept for military purposes as a closed military zone along with the former settle-ments of Sa-Nur, Ganim and Kadim. Since the evacuation, settlers and their supporters have held rallies in Homesh and have expressed a desire to rebuild the settlement.Israelis rally against budget’s austerity measures

Israelis for a second straight week protested against steep austerity measures in the new state budget. More than 1,000 Israelis demonstrated the night of May 18 in Tel Aviv. Hundreds of others also protested throughout the country, including in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea, as well as in Jerusalem and Beersheba. The budget, which raises taxes and cuts the child allowance, passed the Cabinet the week of May 17. Demonstrators in front of Netanyahu’s home were protesting the fact that expenses at the prime minister’s official residence have doubled in the last four years.

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Museum Collection in dialogue The Jewish Museum in New York City will

hold the exhibit “As it were... So to speak: A Museum Collection in Dialogue with Barbara Bloom” until August 4. Inspired in part by

talmudic discourse, in which discussions and commentar-ies take place across time and space, artist Barbara Bloom uses the paneled rooms of the former Warburg Mansion as both museum and home filled with imagined historical guests. Walking through the galleries, visitors encounter furniture-like display cases holding works from the collec-tion. For example, a gaming table houses a Dreyfus Affair game board and ancient Roman dice. Marriage and divorce contracts cover a bed-shaped display case and an analyst’s consultation room holds Sigmund Freud’s cigar box. The juxtaposition of artworks, found texts and Bloom’s writing in the “tableaux” seek to evoke dialogues between people. Visitors encounter Albert Einstein and Marcel Proust discussing the passage of time, or eavesdrop on Duke El-lington and Marilyn Monroe speaking about synesthesia, the mind’s mingling of sensory information.

For more information, contact the museum at 212-423-3200 or [email protected] or visit www.thejewishmuseum.org.Crossing delancey walking Tour

The Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy will hold a “Crossing Delancey Walking Tour” on Sunday, July 14. The tour will discuss the Lower East Side of the early 20th

century and how it has evolved to reflect today’s changing culture north of Delancey Street. Included on the tour will be a visit to Congregation Chasam Sopher, the exterior of Angel Orensanz Cultural Foundation (formerly Congregation Anshe Chesed), the oldest synagogue building in New York City, and Congregation B’nei Jacob Anshe Brzezan (also known as the Stanton Street Shul) – one of the few remaining tenement-style synagogues on the Lower East Side.

The tour will being at 10:45 am. Participants will meet at the LESJC Kling and Niman Family Visitor Center, 400 Grand St. (between Clinton and Suffolk streets). The cost is $18 for adults and $16 for seniors and students. There is an additional charge of $2 additional day of tour. To sign up for the tour, visit www.nycjewishtours.org/calendar.htm#041413 or contact LESJC at 212-374-4100 or [email protected] Bloom exhibit

The Jewish Museum in New York City is hold the exhibit “As it were... So to speak: A Museum Collection in Dialogue with Barbara Bloom” through August 4. Artist Barbara Bloom interest is in questioning the ways people perceive and value objects. The Jewish Museum invited Bloom to create an installation drawn from its nearly 25,000 works of ceremonial, decorative and fine art. Her presentation sets a selection of more than 270 pieces in unconventional contexts, and seeks to offer visitors new ways to view the museum and its holdings. Integrating the former Warburg mansion’s historic rooms into her concept, the artist treats the space as both museum and home, and has filled it with imagined historical guests, including Nefertiti, Émile Zola and George Gershwin among others.

For more information, visit www.thejewishmuseum.org or contact the museum at 212-423-3200 or e-mail [email protected].

Attempting to balance the dis-course of cultural divestment in the public sphere, the CCP’s website features a sizable wall of quotes from popular musicians and film and television actors defending the choice to visit or perform in Israel, and expressing their positive impressions of the country and its people. The group also provides consulting services to talent agents and band managers on the logistical and public relations challenges of coordinating celebrity appearances in Israel.

“We may not all share the same politics or the same opinion on the best path to peace in the Middle East,” the CCP states on its web-site. “But we do agree that singling out Israel, the only democracy in the region, as a target of cultural boycotts while ignoring the now-recognized human rights issues of her neighbors will not further peace.”

Binyamin Kagedan has an M.A. in Jewish thought from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Pau l McCar tney performed in Tel Aviv in September 2008. (Photo from D M Y / Wi k i m e d i a Commons)

Musicians Continued from page 12

New Season ofFilms!

• Non-Feature Films •

A Film Unfinished, a harrowing look at the devious art of a propaganda film made by the Third Reich, is a rich and well-researched investigation into the filmic history of the Warsaw Ghetto. As A Film Unfinished aims to set the record straight, it furthers a political resistance that Jews undertook during the war. In other words, this documentary is a tribute, a correction of history to honor those who died, witnessed, or survived atrocities prior to their move to Treblinka, Warsaw’s affiliate death camp.

Blessed is the Match - In 1944, 22-year Hannah Senesh parachuted into Nazi- occupied Europe with a small group of Jewish volunteers from Palestine. Theirs was the only military rescue mission for Jews that occurred in World War II.

Budapest to Gettyburg - The past and present collide as a world-renowned historian confronts a history he has refused to study-his own. Gabor Boritt is an expert on Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War. But it took his son’s urging to get him to return to his native Hungary and learn about the Jewish experience there from the time of his childhood until, together with his family, he escaped to the United States.

Constantine’s Sword, is a 2007 historical documentary film on the relationship between the Catholic Church and Jews. Directed and produced by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Oren Jacoby, the film is inspired by former priest James P. Carroll’s 2001 book Constantine’s Sword.

Inside Hana’s Suitcase - A real-life Japanese schoolteacher, who appears throughout the film, sparked this entire story by gathering artifacts for a Holocaust educational center she was developing along with a group of girls and boys called The Small Wings. After applying to receive Holocaust artifacts, a large box arrives with a handful of artifacts, including a battered brown suitcase labeled with Hana Brady’s name. The teacher and her students begin searching for the story behind the suitcase. What they discover will surprise you. They wind up unlocking--and showing us in the film--a whole series of deeply moving memories and other related artifacts and photos. Finally, Hana’s surviving brother George travels to Japan to meet the Japanese students.

I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal - Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor who lost 89 family members, helped track down over 1,100 Nazi war criminals and spent six decades fighting anti-Semitism and prejudice against all people.

Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story - This excellent documentary, narrated by Dustin Hoffman, portrays the contributions of Jewish major leaguers and the special meaning that baseball has had in the lives of American Jews. Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story was shown at the Opening Event for the 2012 UJA Campaign.

The Case for Israel: Democracy’s Outpost - Famed attorney, Alan Dershowitz, presents a vigorous case for Israel- for its basic right to exist, to protect its citizens from terrorism and to defend its borders from hostile enemies.

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg - As baseball’s first Jewish star, Hammering Hank Greenberg’s career contains all the makings of a true American success story.

• Feature Films •

A Matter of Size - Winner of numerous international awards, this Israeli comedy is a hilarious and heart-warming tale about four overweight guys who learn to love themselves through the Japanese sport of sumo wrestling. (not rated)

A Woman Called Golda - Ingrid Bergman plays Golda Meir, the Russian born, Wisconsin raised woman who became Israel’s prime minister in the 1960’s and early 1970’s.

Crossing Delancey - This is a warm comedy taking place in New York City. Isabella Grossman desires to rise above her family’s Lower East Side community but her grandmother has other matchmaking plans.

Footnote - The story of a great rivalry between a father and son, both eccentric professors who have both dedicated their lives to work in Talmudic Studies departments of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Though the father shuns overt praise for his work and the son is desperate for it, how will each react when the father is to be awarded the most sought after prize, the Israel prize? This Oscar nomi-nated film will entrance from the start.

Frisco Kid - It’s 1850 and new rabbi Avram Belinski sets out from Philadelphia toward San Francisco. Cowpoke bandit Tom Lillard hasn’t seen a rabbi before but he knows when one needs a heap of help. Getting this tenderfoot to Frisco in one piece will cause a heap of trouble- with the law, Native Americans and a bunch of killers.

Good - In an attempt to establish its credibility, the new Nazi government is seeking out experts to endorse its policies and they come across Johnnie Halder’s novel of a husband who aids his terminally ill wife in an assisted suicide. Because of this the Nazis flatter Johnnie arranging for high paying and prestigious positions. Never evil, Johnnie Halder is an Everyman who goes along, accepts what he is told without question until he is an unwitting accomplice to the Nazi killing machine.

Hidden In Silence - Przemysl, Poland, WWII. Germany emerges victorious over the Russians, and the city comes under Nazi control. The Jewish are sent to the ghettos. While some stand silent, Catholic teenager Stefania Podgorska chooses the role of a savior and sneaks 13 Jews into her attic. Every day, she risks detection--and immediate execution--by smuggling food and water to the silent group living above her. And when two German nurses are assigned to her living quarters, the chances of discovery become dangerously high. This is the true story of a young woman’s selfless commitment and unwavering resolve in the face of war.

Noodle (PAL version- can only be played on computer NOT regular DVD players) - At thirty-seven, Miri is a twice-widowed, El Al flight attendant. Her well regulated existence is suddenly turned upside down by an abandoned Chinese boy whose migrant-worker mother has been deported from Israel. The film is a touching comic-drama in which two human beings- as different from each other as Tel Aviv is from Beijing- accompany each other on a remarkable journey, one that takes them both back to a meaningful life.

Nora’s Will - When his ex-wife Nora dies right before Passover, Jose is forced to stay with her body until she can be properly put to rest. He soon realizes that he is part of Nora’s plan to bring her family back together for one last Passover feast, leading Jose to reexamine their relationship. (not rated)

Operation Thunderbolt - The true story of the Entebbe hijacking and rescue. “Operation Thunderbolt,” was filmed in Israel with the full cooperation of the Israeli government, and is an exciting re-creation of the events of those tense days. We see the full scope of the story, from the original hijacking to the passengers’ captivity in Uganda to the agonized debates at the highest levels of the Israeli government over a diplomatic vs. a military solution. “Operation Thunderbolt” is the thrilling and true story of how one small country refused to let their people be killed by terrorists and took action to prevent it. People who claim that Israel is a “terrorist state” should see the film and be reminded who the real terrorists are.

Orthodox Stance (documentary-2007) - Dimitriy Salita, a Russian immigrant, is making history as a top professional boxer and rigorously observant Jew. While providing an intimate, 3-year long look at the trials and tribulations faced by an up and coming professional boxer, ORTHODOX STANCE is a portrait of seemingly incompatible cultures and characters working together to support Dmitriy’s rare and remarkable devotion to both Orthodox Judaism and the pursuit of a professional boxing title.

Playing for Time - An outstanding cast brings life to this Fania Fenelon autobiography about a Jewish cabaret singer and other Jewish prisoners whose lives were spared at Auschwitz in exchange for performing for their captors.

Rashevski’s Tango - Just about every dilemma of modern Jewish identity gets an airing in this packed tale of a clan of more or less secularized Belgian Jews thrown into spiritual crisis by the death of the matriarch who has held all doubts and family warfare in check. (not rated)

Sarah’s Key - Julia Jarmond, an American journalist is commissioned to write an article about the notorious Vel d’Hiv round up, which took place in Paris, in 1942. She stumbles upon a family secret which will link her forever to the destiny of a young Jewish girl, Sarah.

The Angel Levine - Things couldn’t get worse for Jewish tailor Morris Mishkin (Zero Mostel). His shop has gone up in flames, his daughter has married outside the faith and, worse yet, his wife is slowly dying. But just when he decides to give up on God, a mysterious man (Harry Belafonte) appears, claiming to be his Jewish guardian angel! Doubtful that the stranger is Jewish, never mind an angel, Mishkin must overcome his skepticism if he wants one last chance at redemption.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - Set during World War II, this is the story of Bruno, an innocent and naïve eight-year old boy who meets a boy while romping in the woods. A surprising friendship develops.

The Couple - Based on the true story of a Jewish Hungarian’s desperate attempts to save his family from the Nazi death camps. Mr. Krauzenberg (Martin Landau) is forced to hand over his vast wealth to the Nazis for the safe passage of his family out of occupied Europe, only to find his two remaining servants are left trapped in a web of deceit and danger. Their only hope for survival relies on the courage of Krauzenberg.

The Debt - Academy Award winner Helen Mirren and two-time Academy Award nominee Tom Wilkinson star in The Debt. In 1966, three Mossad agents were assigned to track down a feared Nazi war criminal hiding in East Berlin, a mission accomplished at great risk and personal cost… or was it?

Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story - Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story is an incredibly riveting, Emmy award-winning, fact-based story about a hero who helped over 100,000 Hungarian Jews escape from the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Ushpizin - A fable set in the Orthodox Jewish world in Jerusalem, Ushpizin tells the story of a poor childless couple, Moshe and Malli, whose belief in the goodness of the Almighty follows a roller coaster of situations and emotions but leads to the ultimate happiness, the birth of their son.

May 2013



newS In brIeFFrom JTA

“death to Jews” tattoo costs hungarian martial artist prague gig

A Hungarian martial arts fighter was disinvited from a tournament in Prague because of his Nazi tattoos, including one reading “death to the Jews.” Some sponsors of the Heroes Gate event told organizers that Attila Petrovszki was not allowed to attend the May 17 event because he had a tattoo of Adolf Hitler and a swastika on his body and the antisemitic words, Radio Prague reported. The event’s promoter, Ladislav Kutil, told Radio Prague that the fighter’s appearance had been canceled due to “media pressure” on Heroes Gate and its sponsors, which include gyms, car dealerships and Pepsi. The poster also carries the logos of the city of Prague and Czech Television. Heroes Gate released a statement claiming that Petrovszki’s Hungarian agent had assured them the fighter was no longer an active neo-Nazi and that the tattoos were the result of a troubled youth. The agent said Petrovszki, through kickboxing, was taking his life in a new direction, which the promoters said was what martial arts are all about.New synagogue dedicated in Moscow

A Russian chief rabbi dedicated a Torah scroll at a new synagogue in Moscow. Rabbi Berel Lazar, who is affiliated with the Chabad movement, installed the scroll at the Mi-churinsky synagogue, which opened two months ago, the Interfax news agency reported. The dedication ceremony was held May 14. “The ceremony means that now this place gets the status of a real home of worship, where Jews can hold services in accordance with all the requirements of Jewish law,” Rabbi Michael Lidogoster, a spokesman for Lazar’s office, told Interfax. The Michurinsky congregation is led by Rabbi Shimon Krasnodomsky, who said that daily and Sabbath prayers have been held at the syna-gogue since its opening, as well as Jewish learning and Hebrew lessons. Krasnodomsky added that work would soon begin on educational programs and projects for children. According to Interfax, the Michurinsky congregation is the sixth operational synagogue in Moscow. The Russian capital has a Jewish population of at least 100,000, according to the European Jewish Congress.z Street IRS case to be heard in court

The pro-Israel group Z Street will have a hearing in court on its bid for tax-exempt status as an educational organization. Z Street said on its website that the hearing will take place on July 2 in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. “Two-and-a-half years after filing a complaint in federal court seeking relief from the Internal Revenue Service for viewpoint discrimination against our strongly pro-Israel organization, Z Street has a hearing date,” the group said on the site. Z Street since 2010 has been seeking 501(c)(3) status. Tax exemptions for such groups are broader than for 501(c)(4) groups, which lobby the government. Delays by the IRS in granting 501(c)(4) status to a number of conserva-tive groups are at the center of controversy in Washington. Z Street, which is intended to counterbalance the left-wing group J Street, has claimed that IRS officials delayed approving its status because its views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict contradict those of the Obama administration. IRS officials in affidavits have denied the claim.paris suburb shuts down unlicensed Jewish preschool

A suburban Paris municipality ordered the closure of an unlicensed Jewish preschool. City officials in Charenton, south of the French capital, closed the preschool there in April following complaints and a surprise inspection, the Le Parisien daily reported in mid-May. The preschool, which served about 50 toddlers since its opening about one year ago, was run by the Association of the Jewish Community of Charenton, known locally by the acronym ACIC. Philippe Danilo, a city official in charge of preschools, told Le Parisien that the preschool had corroded walls, faulty electrical infrastructure, unqualified staff and “deplorable hygienic conditions.” Danilo also said traces of toxic lead were found in the indoor paint of the space used as a nursery and that medical checkups of the toddlers who used the space may be necessary. “In the beginning we just wanted to help people out from time to time,” ACIC Vice President Martine Saada told Le Parisien, “but we became victims of our own success.” Saada said that most parents did not pay anything for the preschool’s services, but some donated money to keep it running. “Now they are calling me to ask if I can help them with a solution,” Saada said.Jailed Alan Gross settles lawsuit with U.S. gov’t contractor

Alan Gross, the American-Jewish contractor imprisoned in Cuba since 2009, settled a lawsuit with a contractor for the U.S. government. Gross and his wife, Judy, settled with Development Alternatives, a Maryland-based contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to a notice issued on May 17. The notice did not disclose the settlement amount. The Grosses in November filed a $60 million lawsuit charging that Alan Gross should have been better trained and informed of the risks before going to Cuba to set up Internet access for the Jewish community there. Gross, 64, was arrested in December 2009 as he was leaving Cuba for “crimes against the state.” He spoke virtually no Spanish and traveled to Cuba five times under his own name before his arrest. Gross’ family and U.S. State Department officials say that Gross was in Cuba on a U.S. Agency for International Development contract to help the country’s 1,500 Jews communicate with other Jewish communities using the Internet. The main Jewish groups in Cuba have denied any contact with or knowledge of Gross or the program.

Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentinian dictator who killed Jews, diesFormer Argentinian dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, who is believed to be responsible for the

disappearance of thousands of the country’s Jews, died in prison. Videla was serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity when he died on May 17 at 87. He had ruled the country from 1976-1981, gaining power with a coup toppling President Maria Estela Martinez de Peron, the widow of leader Juan Peron. At least 1,900 Jews were among the 30,000 people who “disappeared” or were arrested, imprisoned, tortured and murdered during the military junta’s reign. It was a disproportionate number considering Jews comprised 1 percent of the Argentinian population but made up 5 percent of the disappeared. The many Jews involved in human rights and social struggles groups were targeted for persecution. In December 2004, AMIA Jewish Center President Abraham Kaul created an annual tribute to the “disappeared Jews.” Each year on Dec. 7, now known as Jewish Disappearance Day, the Argentinean Jewish community holds a commemoration at the AMIA headquarters with human rights associations, politicians and government officials. Argentina returned to a democracy in 1983.Cigarette-smuggling palestinian linked to Ari halberstam’s Brooklyn Bridge murder

One of 16 Palestinians arrested in a cigarette-smuggling ring was linked to the 1994 murder of yeshiva student Ari Halberstam in a terror attack on the Brooklyn Bridge. Muaf-faq Askar, who was arrested the week of May 17 in New York in a plot that is believed to have cost the state millions of dollars in lost revenue, has long been suspected of supplying Rashid Baz with the guns he used to attack a minivan full of yeshiva students. Baz reportedly called Askar his “Palestinian uncle.” Halberstam, 16, was killed in the bridge attack. Baz, an immigrant from Lebanon, shot at the minivan on March 1, 1994, reportedly in retaliation for the murder earlier that year of 29 Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron by a Brooklyn immigrant to Israel, Baruch Goldstein. According to reports, the proceeds from the smuggling scheme are believed to have gone to support Hamas and Hezbollah.A 2001 letter shows Claims Conference alerted to fraud a decade before it was stopped

The Claims Conference was alerted as early as 2001 to a fraud scheme within the organization that ran unimpeded from 1993- 2009 and cost $57 million. The warning to the Claims Conference came in the form of an anonymous letter that reached the organization’s then-director in Germany, Karl Brozik, in mid-2001. The letter identified five ineligible cases and accused Claims Conference employee Semen Domnitser of ap-proving restitution for them. Domnitser, who was found guilty the week of May 10 of spearheading the $57 million scheme, managed to deflect the blame away from himself, and the fraud continued for nearly a decade more. The 2001 letter and subsequent internal review came up in Domnitser’s trial and first appeared in a report the week of May 14 by the Forward, which obtained the letter. At the time, Brozik, who has since died, brought the letter to the attention of senior Claims Conference executives, including Gideon Taylor, then the executive vice president of the Claims Conference. A Claims Confer-ence staffer who conducted an internal review for the organization expressed serious concerns about Domnitser and other Claims Conference employees who reviewed and approved the fraudulent applications. But the organization failed to take action against Domnitser and the fraud continued. In a statement to JTA, the Claims Conference blamed Brozik for accepting Domnitser’s explanations and said its current chief, Greg Schneider, who in 2001 was assistant executive vice president and director of allocations, was not involved in the episode. “The only document that Greg received, as a third cc, was the explanation from Semyon,” Claims Conference communications director Hillary Kes-sler-Godin wrote to JTA in an e-mail, referring to Domnitser. “The entire investigation that occurred did not include Greg and involved people senior to him. Dr. Brozik in Germany accepted Semyon’s explanations for the cases cited in the anonymous letter.” The scheme involved falsifying applications to the Hardship Fund, an account established by the German government to provide one-time payments of approximately $3,360 to those who fled the Nazis as they moved east through Germany, and the Article 2 Fund, through which the German government gives pension payments of approximately $411 per month to needy Nazi victims who spent significant time in a concentration camp, in a Jewish ghetto in hiding or living under a false identity to avoid the Nazis. By the time Claims Conference leaders realized in 2009 that a massive fraud was under way, more than $57 million had been defrauded from the two funds. In all, 31 people were arrested in connection with the scheme. Twenty-eight pleaded guilty and the three who went to trial were found guilty the week of May 10.

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We’ll arrive Sunday evening into Israel and stay overnightin Tel Aviv. The next morning we’ll travel up the coast ofthe Mediterranean to Caesaria, and then travel to the cityof Tiberias, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where we’llstay for two nights.

We’ll travel throughout the Galilee, and we’ll visit themountaintop city of Safed, and there we’ll go up to theGolan Heights.

Then it’s o� to Jerusalem, a truly magical city. We’ll gothrough the Old City, go to the Western Wall, and seemany other sites throughout the city that are so specialand so sacred.

One day will take us down to the Dead Sea, the lowest placeon earth, and a visit to the mountain fortress of Massada.

You will also have the chance to become “ArcheologistsFor a Day”, as we take part in an active archeological dig,which is one of the most productive digs in the country!

Near the end of the trip we will go to an IDF Army Base.We’ll have an opportunity to meet and talk with some ofthe youngsters who are serving in the Army today.

We’ll also visit Tel Aviv, where we’ll sit in the actual placewhere Ben Gurion declared the state, in May, 1948, &then it’s o� to the airport for our trip home.

The cost of the trip is $3895 or $2965 for the land portiononly. To sign up for the trip call Mark Silverberg at570-961-2300 xt1. Questions? Call Barry Weiss,570-650-0874 or Jay Weiss, 570-565-9515, oremail bjtravel4@ gmail.com.

Tel AvivCaesaria

Army BaseTiberias

Sea of GalileeJerusalem

Tzfat (Safed)Golan Heights

MasadaDead Sea

Haifa

See why everyonedescribes this asUnforgetable,the trip of a liftime!

ISRAEL, 2013Home to the

World’s3 Great

Religions!

This journeywill touch you

spiritually,no matter

who you are.Come and sharean experience

so unique, it willbe like nothingelse you’ve ever

done!

Saturday, October 12 -Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Documents

May 20, 2013 Edition of the Reporter