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Feuerstein: Still Battling for Control

MARK ARNOLD
Jewish Journal Staff

Aaron Feuerstein, third-generation owner of the Polartec maker Malden Mills, got an extension in his battle to regain ownership of the Lawrence-based company. The company was granted an extra 30 days beyond the August 26 deadline set by Bankruptcy Court in Worcester to raise $92 million. That’s the amount Feuerstein needs to retain his control of the company founded by his grandfather.

If he fails, ownership will go to creditors, led by GE Capital, whom, Feuerstein claims, will move the company’s 1,200 local jobs to low-wage areas of Asia.

With a new $20 million loan guarantee from the Federal Export-Import Bank, the 77-year-old Feuerstein — subject of a lengthy profile in The Journal July 18 — is still $15 to $20 million short of the amount needed to keep the company from falling into the hands of the creditors. He had hoped to secure $35 million from the bank. Under a separate agreement, Malden Mills will emerge from bankruptcy on September 10.

Feuerstein earned national acclaim for preserving the jobs of his workers when a devastating fire in 1995 put the company out of business for several months. The cost of rebuilding plus a turndown in business forced the company into bankruptcy in 2001. The company is the largest employer in the Lawrence-Methuen area, and his bid to regain company control is backed by leaders of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, Gov. Mitt Romney and officials of the two local communities.

Feuerstein, an Orthodox Jew, asked the Export-Import bank for $35 million in loan guarantees. In explaining its grant of $20 million, the bank said that was the most it could offer based on overseas orders for Malden Mills’ line of fleece fabrics. The bank’s mission is to promote exports from U.S. companies. However, company spokesman David Costello told The Journal Feuerstein’s backers are hopeful the bank will raise its limit to help close the gap.

“We’re working with them to demonstrate a collateral base for additional borrowing, Costello said, counting such assets as real estate, machinery, inventory, and intellectual property.

“Don’t count Aaron out,” he said. “Like Churchill, he never, never, never gives up. He is absolutely focused on making this thing a success.” “Besides,” he added, “the lenders don’t want to own the company. They’d be delighted to sell it to Aaron. We’re a handful.” .

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Traveling the World in the Name of Judaism

SUSAN JACOBS
Jewish Journal Staff

In the past year, globe-trotter Dasee Berkowitz has logged thousands of miles visiting the Czech Republic, Romania, Russia, the Ukraine,

India and New York. The 31-year-old Newton native was the 2002/2003 recipient of The Ralph I. Goldman (RIG) Fellowship from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Inc. (JDC). The JDC’s mission is to serve the needs of Jews throughout the world by sponsoring programs of relief, rescue and renewal. 

The RIG fellowship, established in 1987, allows an individual to spend one year working and studying in overseas locations where JDC is active. It exposes young Jewish leaders to the global work of JDC and gives them the opportunity to participate in the life of international Jewish communities.

“Most Americans think that the two centers of Judaism are either Israel or America, but there are active Jewish communities all over the world,” notes Berkowitz, who has just returned from visiting many of them.

Berkowitz spent a considerable amount of her time abroad in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union identifying indicators of sustainability of small Jewish communities in the region. She found that although there are only 3,000 Jews in the Czech Republic, most of whom live in Prague, the community is strong and vibrant.

“I was struck by the fighting spirit in Eastern Europe, which may have come from the fact that a lot of the activists there were dissidents,” she remarks. She noted a proliferation of Jewish groups and a re-emergence of interest and curiosity in Jewish life. She was excited to discover that people there are defining their Jewish identity through a different lens than that of the Holocaust.
She was also surprised by what she found in India. Berkowitz, whose mother is from Calcutta, spent three months in Bombay conducting a demographic study and serving as a Jewish educator.

Due to a large wave of emigration to Israel, the Jewish population in India has shrunk from approximately 20,000 in the 1940s to about 4,500 today. She spent a lot of time working with young Jewish Indians. She learned that although they are untouched by anti-Semitism and are fully accepted in a society dominated by Hindus and Muslims, they feel cut off and disconnected from other Jewish communities. The work of JDC is especially critical here, she says, as it provides members of the Indian Jewish community access to a vast network of other Jewish communities around the world with which they can share the challenges to building a vibrant Jewish life within a small Jewish community.

“This whole experience was incredibly eye-opening and inspiring, and I grew a lot personally,” says Berkowitz. “But you’re engaging in really serious issues, and it’s challenging to absorb so much in such a short period of time,” she adds.

Berkowitz is on a plane again — this time on her way home to Jerusalem where she has lived since graduating from college. Berkowitz holds an MA in Jewish Education from Hebrew University and a BA in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science from Barnard College.
Once home, she plans to speak with Jewish organizations and publish something about her experience. “I’m eager to get back to Israel and be able to share this experience with others,” she says.

The JDC is currently accepting inquiries from qualified individuals interested in applying for the 2003/2004 fellowship. Candidates should have a Master’s Degree or the equivalent, work experience in their field, demonstrated leadership skills, a strong interest in international Jewish communal affairs and social welfare, and formal and/or informal Jewish education.

To apply, candidates must submit a letter of advocacy no later than November 1. Included in this letter should be details of educational and work experience, plans for the future, reasons for interest in this fellowship and examples of leadership qualities. Based upon this letter, JDC will send out an application, which is due back by November 15, 2003.

For more information, visit the JDC website at www.jdc.org/who_awards_rig.html . Please direct specific questions to awards@jdc.org.

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200 Turn Out for Great Shofar Blowout

AMY SESSLER POWELL
Special to The Jewish Journal

BEVERLY — More than 200 people turned out for the third annual Great Shofar Blowout sponsored by the Jewish Federation of the North Shore.

The sound of so many rams’ horns and plastic shofars at Lynch Park signaled a re-creation of the ancient tradition of ushering in the high holiday season with a daily sounding of the shofar from Rosh Chodesh Elul to Rosh Chodesh Tishri or Rosh Hashanah.

“Sound travels great distances and connects two places,” said Rabbi Steven Rubenstein of Temple B’Nai Abraham, Beverly. “In the spiritual realm, we return to God and a year of goodness after wandering astray. The shofar returns us home.”

Many of those who attended expressed their joy in being provided a venue to practice an ancient Jewish tradition in a secular world.
“It’s a great way to introduce children to something special about being Jewish,” said Robyn Kaplan of Beverly, who attended with her husband George and children Becca, 7, and Noah, 5. “It makes you feel like you are part of something much bigger.”

Andrea Katz of Salem said, “It’s so nice to be with other Jewish people this time of year. We wouldn’t have done this on our own.”
Julie Newburg, director of Jewish continuity program implementation for the Jewish Federation of the North Shore said, “We like to gear the Great Shofar Blowout to families with young children because we feel that will help us with our mission, which is to help keep our children Jewish.”

The Great Shofar Blowout was sponsored by a grant from the Robert I. Lappin Foundations to the Jewish Continuity Committee of the Jewish Federation of the North Shore.

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New Medical Education Endowment Named For Local Doc

SUSAN JACOBS
Jewish Journal Staff

SALEM — To honor his 32 years of service as Chief of Medicine at NSMC/Salem Hospital, colleagues, patients and friends of Dr. Herbert L. Cooper have established a new medical education program in his name.

The Herbert L. Cooper Visiting Professorship will be awarded to a distinguished medical practitioner invited to NSMC/Salem Hospital to offer expertise and education to the medical staff.

A volunteer physician committee is assisting with raising $100,000 to fund the endowment, which has been established through the NSMC Foundation. According to Jim Harris, Director of Donor Relations at the North Shore Medical Center Foundation, the committee has raised more than half the money needed to fund the endowment.

“We invite the community and former patients to come forward and assist in this effort,” he says. “I feel confident we are going to reach our goal within the next three to six months, but we still need a lot of help. All gifts will be graciously accepted.”

The modest Cooper, 69, admits that he is embarrassed by all the attention.

“My first response (to establishing this endowment) was, ‘Don’t do that.’ I don’t do what I do for fame or glory. However I accept this honor because it is a teaching program not just for medical students, but for interns, residents and attending staff as well. Education is always desirable, and this program raises it to a higher level. It’s better than a statue or a plaque, and I’m flattered to have my name attached to it.”

Cooper will join with other selected physicians from NSMC/Salem Hospital’s medical staff to select award recipients. They hope to be able to choose the first recipient in 2004.

“Decades ago Dr. Cooper chose to establish his practice here on the North Shore and we have been all the richer for it,” said Betty Ann Copley, endowment fund co-chair and former patient. “We are pleased to be able to establish this professorship to show our immense gratitude.”

Dr. Maury McGough is a current colleague and former student who has known and worked with Dr. Cooper for 20 years. She says he was the main reason she came to practice as an internist in Salem.

“He’s been such a mentor to all of us,” says McGough, who was one of the first women to complete the doctor training program in internal medicine under Cooper and was recently appointed as the first female president of the Salem Hospital Medical Staff.

“He has a strong commitment to ongoing education. He always kept up-to-date, re-educating himself even in subjects that were not his area of expertise. He’s wise, fair and absolutely trustworthy. He’s the way all doctors should be,” she adds.

Dr. Cooper received his medical degree from The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. He completed his residency at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, and held fellowships in gastroenterology through the National Institutes of Health under Dr. Franz J. Ingelfinger at Boston University. He held the rank of captain in the U.S. Army Reserve while serving as assistant chief of gastroenterology at Letterman General Hospital at the Presidio in San Francisco. He became Salem’s first gastroenterologist in 1964.
Education has always been a priority for Cooper. Over the years, he has taught at Boston University and Tufts University Schools of Medicine and at Harvard Medical School. He established the Medical Education program at Salem Hospital in 1968, and has been its director since its inception. He also served as program director for the internal medicine residency at Salem Hospital from 1979-1995.
His numerous professional commitments include memberships on the Mass. Medical Society Committee on Accreditation, the Partners HealthCare Quality Agenda Steering Committee, and the Board of Trustees of North Shore Medical Center.

Cooper and his wife Ruth, a retired teacher, reside in Marblehead. They have two grown children. Scott is a neurologist who lives in Cleveland. Suzanne has a PhD in economics and teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The Coopers have two grandchildren, who live in Lexington.

Individuals interested in contributing to the Herbert L. Cooper, M.D. Endowment should contact Jim Harris at the NSMC Foundation, 81 Highland Ave., Salem 01970. His phone number is 978-825-6284. All contributions are tax deductible.

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BU’s New President
Jewish Involvement: ‘A Lifelong Experience’

MARK ARNOLD
Jewish Journal Staff

Daniel S. Goldin, former administrator of NASA, will become the ninth president of Boston University November 1, succeeding long-time BU chancellor John Silber, who will step down from that post. Goldin, the University Nominating Committee’s first choice, grew up in a Jewish family in the South Bronx. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1962 and began his career at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, where he worked on electric propulsion for human interplanetary travel. He spent 25 years at TRW, where he headed its Space and Technology Group in Redondo Beach, CA.

As head of NASA from April 1992 to November 2001 — longer than anyone else — he served under three presidents. He is credited with streamlining the agency and championing exploration of Mars. He was also instrumental in linking the Israeli space program with that of the United States. He and his wife Judy have two grown daughters, Ariel and Laura. He was interviewed August 16.

JJ: How involved have you been Jewishly in the course of your career?
DG: Pretty involved. When we were in Cleveland, I was one of the founders of the Cleveland Council on Soviet anti-Semitism. That was in the mid-sixties. That and similar movements elsewhere led in part to opening of the gates allowing Soviet Jews to leave. My wife Judy and I were very active in Temple Beth Israel there. In Los Angeles we were active members of Temple Isaiah. Being involved Jewishly has been a lifelong experience with us.

JJ. What about Israel. Have you been involved there?
DG: I’ve been very engaged with the development of the technology program in Israel. I feel very good about the relationships I’ve made there. I’ve met with all the leaders at one time or another: Sharon, Barak, Netanyahu, Ezer Weizman. I had relationships with Israel before I went to NASA and strengthened them there.

JJ: You helped with their space program and their astronaut program, didn’t you?
DG: I’d rather not talk about that....

JJ: What kind of Jewish upbringing did you have?
DG: Orthodox upbringing. My parents believed in the Jewish tradition. They came from ultra-Orthodox households and as first generation Americans, they rebelled a little bit. We celebrated the big holidays at home: Passover, Chanukah. My mother’s parents lived with us and my grandfather used to take me to synagogue with him, an Orthodox synagogue. I loved Simchat Torah in temple especially. I didn’t learn to daven. I was a bar mitzvah. Besides him, I was probably the only member of the household who fasted on Yom Kippur.

JJ: What’s your impression of BU? You’re not a graduate after all.
DG: I’m very impressed. Methodists founded this university and they did a wonderful job. They welcomed women and people outside the mainstream right from the start. That’s one of the things that attracted me here. They welcomed Jews right from the beginning. It’s a university whose values are terrific.

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Resistance Was Not Futile: Salem Man Stood Up to Third Reich

GARY BAND
Jewish Journal Staff

SALEM — “The Nazis never really conquered the spirit of Berlin,” insists German-born Rudolph Knochenhauer of Salem. He should know. In 1933-34, this jovial, socially and politically astute — and still gainfully employed — 89-year old was a member of the Black Front, one of many German groups that spoke out and demonstrated against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

“I had many problems with the Third Reich,” says Rudy, as he is known to many on the North Shore from his involvement in the once Salem-based Oktoberfest. Among the area Jewish residents he knows are Herb Belkin of Swampscott, for whom he worked 10 years ago, and Max Talkofsky of Salem, whom he knew from the former Salem-based Jewish Festival.

But long before he came to Salem in 1957, Rudy’s courage in the face of overwhelming political power came at a high price. In 1935, at age 21, he was arrested for treason and served two years in a prison in Lackau, 100 miles east of Berlin. He was then drafted, most unwillingly, into the regular German Army in 1941, where he served for two years before being captured by the British Army in North Africa in 1943.

Before delving further into how Rudy got from North Africa to the North Shore, he described what he thought were Hitler’s motivations. How did he come to feel about the Jews as he did and find so many like-minded people with whom to carry out his twisted plans? Why did some resist while others fell in step?

“Germany was not in position to survive four-and-a-half years of war,” Rudy said. “It was very hard to rebuild. The Social Democratic Party took power in 1919 under Fritz Herbert in an environment of pure chaos. It was a breeding ground for nationalistic and communistic propaganda to establish their so-called systems. In the 20s and early 30s, there were 36 different parties in Germany.

“Hitler was not from Germany but Austria, which was a very anti-Semitic country. Hitler himself was always very anti-Semitic. He was rejected by the Austrian Arts Academy based simply on the fact that the guy didn’t have that much talent. But Hitler took everything personally. He and his opinion were always right. So after he was rejected from the academy, he found like-minded people in the Bavarian part of Germany, which was very strongly Roman Catholic.

“He joined the National Workers’ Party, which was a breeding ground for politicians. And because he had a gift for gab, he soon took over and formed the National Socialist Workers’ Party. The swastika was actually a symbol of a Nordic Tribe from Sweden and Finland that was the sign of the rising sun. Hitler became a German citizen in 1932, with many followers already behind him who believed he had the answers to all Germany’s problems.”

Within the Workers’ Party were people who would disagree with the future Führer. One was a man named Otto Strasser, whom Hitler forced to leave because he represented an affront to his authority. Strasser, born in 1898, broke with the Workers’ Party in 1930 and formed the Black Front a year later as a means to challenge the power and authority Hitler was quickly gaining among the working class.
Many of Hitler’s early followers later renounced their affiliation with him and the party. Rudy says that when he learned that Hitler was receiving funding from the armament, coal and steel industries, “There was no room for me. I was always kind of a revolutionary, so I naturally gravitated to Otto Strasser and the Black Front.”

Unaffectionately referred to by many as The National Bolshevik Party, Rudy says the Black Front was an umbrella organization with at least 5,000 members. But after Hitler’s National Socialist Workers’ Party began gaining national political power and momentum, the Black Front was outlawed in 1933, just two years after it was formed.

According to Rudy, the Black Front wanted a “genuine revolution in Germany; to influence the masses in an uprising against the Nazi Party. There was a multitude of opposition groups to Hitler,” he said. “Not all Germans were Nazis.”

During Rudy’s first four years on earth, 1914-18, Germany was ruled by Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II. Raised in a very poor home in Berlin by only his mother, a divorced seamstress, Rudy left high school at age 16 and began working, first in landscaping, then as an apprentice in an interior decorating shop. Not yet aware how volatile the Nazi Party was, he joined the Nazi Youth Movement in 1927 and stayed with it until 1932. “It was like the Boy Scouts,” he said.

But when he learned what was going on in the party, he left immediately. “When I say yes to join something, there must be very strong reasons to say no,” he explains gravely. “I knew from my own observations that Hitler would soon come to power. I left a year before that. I heard about Otto Strasser, and joined with the Black Front in 1933.”

Strasser was not only made to leave the Workers’ Party but forced into exile in Czechoslovakia because he was perceived to know too much of their inner workings. Rudy worked for an underground courier service, transporting information between Strasser and members of the Black Front in Germany.

In 1934, after less than two years in this work, Rudy was arrested by the Gestapo at 4:30 a.m. after one of the other underground couriers who was caught named Rudy as a co-conspirator. “I always knew sooner or later that something would go wrong.” He was put on trial and accused of “preparation of high treason” and sentenced in 1935 along with 10 other Black Front members. He received a two-year sentence, while others received as much as five years.

After his release in 1937, Rudy had to report to the police precinct in Berlin once a week for the next three years. Ordinarily at this time, anyone approaching or encountering a person of authority had to give the obligatory “Heil Hitler” salute. But as a convicted criminal, he was exempt from this.

He found work during that time, but it wasn’t easy; though he wouldn’t have to work long. He was drafted into the German Army in 1941, and, because of his “unreliability,” placed in Infantry Unit #999, a punitive outfit consisting of known troublemakers.
“I only had to give my word of honor that I was not involved in any illegal activity,” he quips. After serving in various areas, while working as a runner between a forward position and battalion headquarters he was captured by the British in North Africa in 1943. Because he had learned English and some French in high school, Rudy worked for a while as an interpreter for the British Army. But because the POW camps in England were very crowded, Rudy was sent first to a POW camp in Oklahoma, then Mississippi, then Maryland, and finally to another in Fort Devens, MA.

The officials at the POW camp in Maryland actually wanted to send Rudy back to Germany on sabotage missions, but he refused. That’s when he was sent to the Massachusetts camp and soon back across the pond.
After that, he was shipped back to England in March, 1946. Upon returning to Germany, he said the mood was very sad. “They had just lost a war, and everything else.”

Of his knowl-edge and feelings regarding the murder of six million Jews, Rudy says, like many, he was not aware of what the concentration camps were for until after they were liberated. “The world learned of the atrocities only after liberation,” he says. “Some local people knew, but didn’t say anything.”

As for Hitler and the carnage he created, Rudy says, “Dictatorships are always a bad thing....Whole nations perished because of a philosophy in the minds of Hitler, Himmler and Goebels. It shows what a few people can do. These fanatics succeeded in murdering millions of innocent people and giving the mass of German citizens a bad name.”
How did he feel about his brief role as a revolutionary? “I did what I felt I had to do. I wish everybody would have done what they felt. That was my biggest disappointment in the German people.”

For the next couple of years, Rudy worked in a government statistics office and then at a medical procurement center in Frankfurt. He met his future wife, a pediatric nurse, in a coffee shop there in 1946, and married in 1948. The couple decided to leave Germany in 1956. Through the Lutheran Church, they arranged an American sponsor in, of all places, Kalamazoo, Michigan. But when they and their eight-year-old daughter arrived in New York on January 25, 1957, Rudy’s 43rd birthday, they learned their sponsor had died.

After a few days in New York, they were put on the phone with the Rotary Club and asked if they would consider settling in Salem. “They put us on a train and we came here,” Rudy said. When they arrived, they had $250. Their first residence was an apartment in the Lafayette Hotel. Within two weeks, Rudy had a job at the LB Moody Company in Beverly making $55 a week. He quickly earned the shop owner’s trust and his pay steadily increased. His wife opened a daycare center on the first floor of their home in Salem, purchased in 1958 for $13,500 and where he still lives today. He hopes to pass it on to his daughter and granddaughter who live in North Carolina.

These days Rudy continues to work part-time at the West India Goods Store in Salem.
“I love Salem,” he says. “It’s a beautiful place that has been very good to me.”

Of America, he says he considered himself a guest in this country and felt it was his duty to be a good citizen.

“I paid my way, I paid my dues. I worked hard. I established a German-American Club, held the Oktoberfest for 13 years, and made a lot of friends. That’s good enough for me. At 89, I’m still in pretty good shape and I intend to be around a little while longer.”

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National News

Loss of Power Brings Communities Closer — but Shows Preparedness

RACHEL POMERANCE

NEW YORK (JTA) — It was Thursday afternoon, three days before 1,800 Jewish kids were to arrive for the final week of the JCC Maccabi games, and 40 delegation leaders were ironing out the logistics at a New Jersey hotel.
That’s when the lights and the air conditioning went dead, and the room quickly became hot and sticky.

But the organizers kept planning, hardly skipping a beat.

“I gotta tell you,” said Lenny Silberman, North American continental director of the JCC Maccabi Games, “doing this for the games for 20 years and working with those communities, the potential for a big balagan” — brouhaha — “was definitely there.”

But “it was amazing,” he said Monday from his cell phone at the site of the games, the Jewish Community Center on the Palisades.
Thanks to the organizers’ calm, the blackout didn’t create even “an ounce” of anxiety — and all the athletes, hosted by local families, arrived in time for Sunday’s opening ceremonies.

“We knew there was no power, but we also knew that we had 1,800 kids that were depending on us on Sunday, so we had to do what we had to do,” Silberman said.

A mix of determination and calm was found in Jewish communities across the Northeast that were impacted Aug. 14 by the massive blackout, the largest in the nation’s history.

Jewish communities also mirrored the mood of the population at large, which was relieved to learn that the outage was the result of a system overload, not terrorism.

Yet the incident highlighted Jewish organizations’ lack of preparedness for an emergency situation.

David Gad-Harf, executive director of Detroit’s Jewish Community Council, praised the spirit of communal cooperation — people took to the streets for block parties, cooking steaks that had defrosted in their freezers — but called the power failure a “wake-up call not only for the Jewish community, but for America as a whole.”

Without an “old-fashioned” non-electric phone on hand, Gad-Harf said, the agency was unable to contact local federation leaders or other Jewish agencies.

“We realized that we were really not prepared for a crisis of this kind,” he said.

Hannah Rosenthal, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella organization for local federation community-relations councils, agreed.

“We learned how completely dependent on electricity we are,” she said, noting that even the organization’s national contingency plan is dispatched through computers.

The alternative plan is to use telephones — which, if they were typical office phones, depend on electricity and didn’t work in the blackout — followed by cell phones, whose networks quickly were overloaded.

“None of those three plans worked for us,” she said.

A new backup system has been in the works, Rosenthal said, explaining that a computer motherboard located in the Midwest could release information remotely.

But even that wouldn’t have helped last week, as parts of the Midwest went as black as Manhattan.

As a result, every Jewish agency had to fend for itself in the blackout — without the national mobilizations or alerts that are customary in emergencies.

There was “not the time or the communications capacity to mobilize,” said John Ruskay, executive vice president and CEO of the UJA-Federation of New York. “Our first responsibility was to deal with the safety and security of our people.

“Every agency with whom I’ve spoken was better prepared and had a better system in place than we did on 9/11, and yet there are times when you still need to call audibles,” he said, using a term for football plays that are improvised in response to unexpected circumstances.
While commending the efforts of his federation’s social service agencies, Ruskay noted that Jewish agencies realized they must establish more effective backup modes of communication.

Many rose to the occasion with resourcefulness.

Some 150 young people were staying in the hostel at Manhattan’s 92nd St. Y when the lights went out.

Borrowing yoga mats from the gym, the staff turned the senior lounge into a makeshift boarding room. They served meals paid for with IOU’s from local grocery stores and brought games and cards from their children’s and seniors’ centers and a transistor radio for news and music.

Despite the enormity of the power failure, Jewish communities across the country took it in stride and were only minimally hindered.

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International News

Israel Gets Tougher After Bus Bombing

LESSLIE SUSSER

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The massive bus bombing August 21, which killed 21 people, most of them fervently Orthodox Jews and some of them children, may turn out to be a defining moment in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It signaled the collapse of the cease-fire, or “hudna,” declared by Palestinian terrorist organizations in late June and generated potentially far-reaching Israeli, American and Palestinian policy reappraisals.

Israel launched a string of targeted strikes against terrorist leaders, warning that it would no longer distinguish between political and military echelons of any organization waging terror, including Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.

The United States exerted unprecedented pressure on the Palestinian Authority to unite its armed forces, collect illegal weapons and smash terrorist organizations before a new cycle of terror and reprisal spins out of control.
And the Palestinians made some tentative moves against terrorists, while urging a new cease-fire that Israel suspects is designed to tie the Jewish state’s hands and avert the need for the Palestinian Authority to take more tangible steps against groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Officially, Israel and the Palestinians continue to back the American-initiated road map peace plan.

Indeed, both parties claim the breakdown stems from the other side’s failure to implement its obligations under the road map, and both maintain that their new moves are designed to force more scrupulous execution.

Some critics, however, say the flaw is not in the failure to implement the road map but in the plan itself, and they are calling for a new approach.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, never a fan of the road map, has revived his call for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, has reiterated his proposal for an American trusteeship over Palestine.

For different reasons, both say the road map in its present form will never work.
Still, Israel remains committed to the plan — and aides say Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hopes the renewed policy of targeting Hamas leaders will help get the plan back on track.

Critics charge that the targeted killings are a deliberate ploy to undermine a peace plan Sharon never wanted, but his aides claim the strikes make clear to the Palestinian Authority what will happen if it continues to evade a confrontation with Hamas.
Moreover, Sharon aides say, knowing they are targets could convince Hamas leaders to suspend hostilities. If they don’t, Israel believes, eradication of the top leadership will weaken the movement’s ideological and organizational coherence.

The policy of striking at Hamas leaders has revived the debate in the Cabinet and the defense establishment over what to do about Arafat — who, Israeli officials say, is every bit as much a supporter of terrorism as the Hamas leaders, and more of a thorn in the side of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu support expelling Arafat, and the government is preparing an “Arafat file” so that it will be in a position to explain any action it may decide to take against him.

Several months ago, Amos Gilad, a top adviser to Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and an expert on Arafat, convinced Israeli leaders not to expel Arafat, arguing that Arafat would be more dangerous abroad than confined to his headquarters in Ramallah.

Now, however, Gilad says the option of expelling Arafat should be considered seriously. Gilad argues that international conditions have changed with the road map, and Arafat’s disruptive influence has grown since Abbas was appointed.

Some Israeli Cabinet ministers and ex-generals now speak openly of assassinating Arafat. Maj. Gen. Yom-Tov Samya, a former head of the army’s southern command, declared on Israel Radio on Monday that after some short-term chaos, the Palestinian people — and some Arab governments — would thank Israel for removing Arafat from the scene.
Barak, however, argues that recent events prove that with or without Arafat, there is no peace partner on the Palestinian side. Therefore, in Barak’s view, there is no point to pursing the road map.

Instead, he says, Israel should complete its security fence along the border with the West Bank as quickly as possible and then withdraw behind it.

At the same time, it should announce a generous peace plan of its own that would show that the fence’s route — which cuts into the West Bank at several points to surround major Israeli settlements — is not a land-grab but purely a security arrangement until the Palestinians are ready to talk peace.

Moreover, Barak and others argue, the road map offers the Palestinians statehood before the sides have settled the key issues of borders, Jerusalem and refugees — something that’s “very dangerous for Israel,” Barak says.

Barak’s position is especially significant since he is considering a political comeback in the autumn on a unilateral-withdrawal credo.

But he’s not the only one making the argument.

In the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, influential military analyst Ze’ev Schiff recently outlined a nightmare scenario under which the Palestinians achieve statehood at an intermediate stage of the road map, but — because they have refused to dismantle terrorist groups — renegades continue attacking Israel from the safety of the Palestinian state. The renegades’ claims would be over issues the whose resolution the road map has deemed for after statehood, not before.

Indyk agrees that the Palestinians are not yet prepared to cut a peace deal with Israel — but his conclusion is that they need considerable American help.

Recent events show that no solution is possible without deep American involvement, says Indyk, who proposes an American trusteeship in Palestine.

If President “Bush really wants to help create a democratic Palestinian state,” Indyk wrote, “It should be clear by now that the road map alone won’t get him there.”

Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.

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Developers to Create Artists Lofts in an Old Neighborhood

GARY BAND
Jewish Journal Staff

Roger Volk of Swampscott and Andrew Perkins of Marblehead have collaborated on many projects over the last 15 years. Volk, a CPA, and Perkins a real estate developer, are now focused on the Mt. Vernon Lofts in Lynn, a project they hope will infuse new life into a neighborhood close to the hearts of many members of the North Shore Jewish community.

“It’s a win, win, win situation,” asserts Volk. “The artists win, the city of Lynn wins, and it’s a good project for us,” insists a man who has advised clients on money matters for the last 38 years.
Two buildings are included in this $4 million purchase and renovation endeavor. The first building, which will be purchased in September, will house 19 units at 24 Mt. Vernon Street. The other, at 14 Mt. Vernon Street, will be purchased in October and house 16 units. Each site will require extensive renovations to the existing buildings — once factories and now underutilized warehouses — built in the 1940s.
“These building have used up their usefulness as warehouses,” says Perkins. Additionally, the tax base on the buildings, currently at $6,000, will jump to $30,000.

The final structures will include galleries for artists to show and sell their work, space for kilns, a dark room in the basement, a solarium and a grass-covered roof deck. They are currently negotiating to acquire two separate lots for reserved parking. The project, made possible by co-sponsorship of Lynn Arts, located across the street, is also buoyed by verbal support from Lynn city councilors and Mayor Edward J. Clancy, Jr.

Volk and Perkins estimate 6-8 months for completion of renovations, and occupancy by June 2004. While one doesn’t have to be an artist to move in, so far the majority of buyers are in fact artists.

Currently, there are 10 purchase and sale agreements and three reservations made on on units in the first building.
The men insist that no matter one’s level of income, whether a struggling artist or making it big, these units are both practical and affordable. They are also located a short distance from the commuter rail.

David Gass of Lynn, an artist, musician and realtor, originally brought the idea of building artists lofts in Lynn to Perkins. “I thought it was a great idea,” Perkins said. “We had some meetings, spent a year and a half looking for the right buildings and finding interested artists. What we found was many were getting displaced by rising rental costs in places like Chelsea and Somerville and needed a place they could live and work at an affordable rate.”

The 35 units, between 800 and 1500 square feet, cost between $118 and $250 thousand. “You can’t make 100K a year a get in for no down payment,” says Volk. “But for someone making 40K, there are all kinds of incentives.” Potential buyers with this income can get in for a very low or no down payment, he says.

“This deal is outstanding for artists. Permanent location, ownership, and energy from other artists. It’s like a colony.”

Volk and Perkins are convinced that these lofts will also spur further developments and revitalize the downtown Lynn area. “When individuals, couples and families move into an area, they don’t only make money, but spend money,” says Perkins. “I think these lofts will improve the overall downtown environment, and I’m happy to be giving back to a city that has been good to me.”

For more information, visit artisitsloftsforsale.com.

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JTA News Briefs

Fleischer Speaking Out on Israel
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Ari Fleischer is speaking to audiences about the U.S.-Israel relationship. The former White House press secretary is offering audiences a speech on “America and Israel: The Path to Stability in the Middle East,” according to Washingtonian magazine. Fleischer, who has three alternative speech topics, is seeking $50,000 per address.

Mr. Bloomberg Goes to Jerusalem
JERUSALEM (JTA) — New York City’s mayor is visiting Jerusalem on a one-day solidarity mission.
“You can see that America is not letting the terrorists win. We are striking back and that’s — I think — what Israel has always done and what I would urge you to continue to do,” Bloomberg said during a visit to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, where those wounded from an Aug. 19 bus bombing are being treated. Bloomberg also was scheduled to visit the Western Wall and then ride on bus No. 2, the line that was bombed last week. Bloomberg is being accompanied by a former New York City mayor, Ed Koch.

France Balky on Hamas
NEW YORK (JTA) — France is opposing efforts to place the political wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations.
France draws a distinction between the groups’ military and political wings. The United States and Israel consider the organizations terror groups, and say it’s ridiculous to distinguish among their constituent parts.
Last week, President Bush froze the assets of six Hamas members and five Hamas-linked charities and urged other countries to do the same.

Schwarzenegger’s Dad Checked
NEW YORK (JTA) — The Simon Wiesenthal Center is investigating the Nazi background of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s father.
Last week, reports surfaced that the elder Schwarzenegger served as a Nazi storm trooper, and now the center is investigating what his unit did. The “Terminator” star-turned-California gubernatorial candidate long has been a supporter of the Wiesenthal Center.
“Should that record have any bearing on Arnold Schwarzenegger himself? In my opinion, absolutely not,” the center’s director, Rabbi Marvin Hier, said.

Magazine Ranks Yeshiva High
NEW YORK (JTA) — Yeshiva University was ranked among the top universities in the nation.
The magazine U.S. News & World Report, in its annual college rankings, ranked Yeshiva, modern Orthodoxy’s flagship academic institution, 40th in national research doctoral universities.

Bush Appoints Pipes
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Bush appointed Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes to the U.S. Institute for Peace.
Last Friday’s appointment of Pipes to the government think tank was taken during a congressional recess and will allow Pipes to serve without Senate approval through the end of the current congressional term, which ends in January 2005.
Supporters call Pipes, director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, a prescient scholar who has helped the world understand Islamic terrorism.
Detractors, including some congressional Democrats and Arab groups, opposed the nomination, calling him anti-Arab and unqualified to serve on the board of an organization that promotes peace.
Pipes has dismissed such accusations as character assassination.

Israeli Flag Offends MIT
NEW YORK (JTA) — An MIT student was told to remove an Israeli flag from his dorm window because it was a hazard.
University administrators last month told Jonathan Goler that hanging the flag “outside a window, in a ‘public space,’ violates MIT housing rules and regulations,” according to MIT’s student newspaper, The Tech.
Goler, who has refused to take down the flag, said he initially was told to remove it because a fellow resident found it offensive, the paper reported.
The president of Goler’s dormitory, who is authorized to decide the matter, said dorm policies “prohibit any object or posting on any doors or corridors inside the building as well as on the exterior.”

Polish Artist Sells Nazi Trinkets
NEW YORK (JTA) — A Polish artist in the Netherlands is selling “Auschwitz souvenirs” to remind people to fight discrimination.
Agata Siwek, 30, who grew up near the infamous death camp, says she is selling items like crematorium refrigerator magnets, Auschwitz baseball caps and “Arbeit Mach Frei” key rings and T-shirts to remind people of the Holocaust and the need to combat discrimination and war, Reuters reported.
Holocaust survivor Salomon Zanten, 81, said seeing such items could trigger painful memories. “It’s a bad idea,” he said. “How far does one go?”

Israel Presses Japan on P.A.
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Japan should pressure the Palestinians to dismantle terrorist groups, Israel’s foreign minister said. Silvan Shalom said he made the comments in a meeting Tuesday with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Japan has given more than $630 million to the Palestinian Authority during the past decade. Shalom also spoke with Koizumi about Israel’s concerns regarding the nuclear weapons program of Iran, Japan’s third-largest oil supplier. “Japan can understand more than others what nuclear weapons mean, and the same threat you have in the region from North Korea we have in our region from Iran,” Shalom said.

Muslims Ordered to Stay Away From Mosque
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Two Muslim officials were ordered to stay away from the Temple Mount after they tried to block Jewish tourists there from entering. An Israeli court made the ruling Tuesday against the officials of the Wakf, the Muslim religious trust that administers the Temple Mount, after a group of Muslims held a prayer demonstration at the site Monday. Visits to the Temple Mount by non-Muslims were reinstated last week after being generally forbidden since the Palestinian intifada began three years ago. The Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest site; it is also home to the Al-Aksa Mosque.

Arafat Taps New Security Chief
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Yasser Arafat appointed former security chief Jibril Rajoub as his national security adviser.
The move by the Palestinian Authority president is seen as another attempt to keep power from the government of P.A. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel Rejects Cease-Fire Offer
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel rejected the latest offer for a Palestinian cease-fire.
Over the weekend, Israel turned down the offer to halt its military operations in exchange for a new cessation of violence.
Israel said it cannot afford to suspend its actions against terrorists, particularly after a suicide bomber killed 21 people in a bus bombing in Jerusalem last week.
Israel saw the attack, for which Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility, as evidence that the terrorist groups used the cease-fire declared in late June to regroup and re-arm.

Israel Gets U.S. Loan Guarantee
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel and the United States signed a $9 billion loan guarantee last week.
The agreement is expected to give Israel’s ailing economy a much-needed boost. It will allow Israel to borrow $9 billion on the world market, with American guarantees as collateral.
However, the United States demanded that funds go to Israel proper, not to the West Bank or Gaza.

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Jews with Tattoos

SUSAN JACOBS
Jewish Journal Staff

Tattoos used to be associated with smarmy longshoremen and rowdy sailors. Times have changed. Today, a growing number of college students and young professionals are decorating themselves with what they call “body art.” This includes (but is not limited to) tattoos. And although Jews have historically frowned upon the act of deliberately defacing the body, many individuals who are choosing to permanently alter their bodies are, in fact, Jewish.

Noah Rodman of Peabody is a junior at Salem State majoring in business. Prior to getting his first tattoo, he consulted with two local rabbis. Both of them advised him against doing it, saying that he was defacing his God-given body. Noah thought about it a long time before making the trek to Lightwave Tattoo and Body Piercing in Saugus. “I consider it decorating my body, not defacing it,” he says.
Every picture tells a story, and this is certainly true with regard to tattoos. Before entering the studio, Noah carefully considered what image to inscribe on his body. He wanted to express his Jewish pride, so he decided upon a chai symbol.

“I always wanted a Jewish theme on my body,” explains the serious 20-year-old. “I started with a chai because it means ‘life’ and added shalom because it means ‘peace’. I’ve got a bunch more planned — all with Jewish designs,” he says. His next tattoo, which he wants to put on his left arm in the coming weeks, will be a Jewish star surrounded by his parents’ names in Hebrew. Other designs he is contemplating include a Jacob’s lion for his right arm and his Hebrew name tattooed across his back.

Although Noah was thrilled with his tattoo, it took him four months to tell his parents. Judith and Ray Rodman were less than thrilled.
“A couple of months ago he told me he got a tattoo,” recalls Judith, who was away on vacation with her husband when he did it. “I thought he was joking, but then he pulled up his shirt and showed it to me. I was going to kill him when I found out, but he was 20, so what could I do?” she says.

“He’s always felt strongly about being a Jew, and I guess this is one way for him to express that sentiment. I was glad it was a Jewish tattoo, but I still feel it’s against Jewish law to get a tattoo,” she adds.

According to Rabbi Edgar Weinsberg of Temple Beth El in Swampscott, it is technically not against Jewish law to get a tattoo. The basic position of Judaism, he explains, is that self-laceration is forbidden since it was part of the ancient Celtic worship practices of the Canaanites. The Pagans would lacerate themselves with knives and cutting tools to attract the attention of the gods. But, he points out, tattoos need not be regarded as lacerations.

“There are those who say that by getting a tattoo, you are altering and defacing the body given to you by God. But I don’t share that view. I see them as decorative practices that express the individuality of those who get them,” he says. “On a purely subjective level, I do not endorse them. But it’s not prohibited by Jewish tradition,” he adds.

He explains that according to Shulkan Aruch, the code of law followed by the Orthodox, Jews with tattoos cannot be buried in the main part of Jewish cemeteries. But he admits that Shulkan Aruch “is not the last word,” and mentions that “a lot of ancient Jewish laws were designed not to be punitive, but (were created) as a pedagogic function to raise Jewish consciousness and awareness.”
“In our North Shore community, no one’s checking to see if the deceased have tattoos,” he says, adding that if he was officiating at a Jewish funeral and heard that the deceased had a tattoo, he would “disregard it.”Weinsberg’s position on tattoos may come across somewhat liberal for a Conservative rabbi. Perhaps that is because his own two grown children sport tattoos.

“I’m not happy about it, but I can live with it,” he says. His oldest child Dan, a policeman in Florida, has four tattoos, including a Star of David and a Hamsa on the inside of each arm. His daughter Elana has a colorful floral design etched on her lower back

Elana, a 22-year-old senior at Lesley University in Cambridge, got her tattoo in 2001. She picked the image out of a book at a Boston tattoo parlor. She says it was a spur-of-the-moment decision that took 45 minutes and cost about $350.

“My dad’s philosophy is that it’s my body, and I can do whatever I want with it,” says Elana, who also has a pierced belly button and tongue. “My mom doesn’t like my tattoo because she thinks it’s too big. I want to get another one on my shoulder. My mom wants it to be small and dainty. I told her she can come with me and help me pick it out,” she says.

Since diseases like AIDS and hepatitis can be transmitted via tattoo needles, the Weinsbergs (and other parents) are understandably concerned about safety.

“A safe place is important,” agrees Elana, who researched that before getting her tattoo. “I know people that went to Israel and got a tattoo done on the street. I would never do that.” She points out that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has legalized the practice and established rules and regulations pertaining to body art businesses.

Rob Dunn, 22, got his first tattoo in January 2000, when he was a student at the University of Maine and a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. Following a tradition that dates back to WWII, he had his Greek fraternity letters tattooed on his ankle. Then, to celebrate his birthday that summer he got an ankh, an ancient Egyptian symbol of eternal life, inscribed on his left arm. Since tattooing was not legal in Massachusetts in 2000, he had to travel to New Hampshire to get the ankh.

Dunn, who lives in Revere and is taking liberal arts classes at North Shore Community College, is gearing up to get several more tattoos. He is carefully designing them himself. “I wouldn’t walk into a tattoo parlor and say, ‘I want that one.’ I want all my designs to be unique, one-of-a-kind symbols that mean something to me,” he says.

He wants to put a dragon’s claw holding a black orb, which he claims is a mystical symbol of protection, on his shoulder. And in tribute to his beloved grandfather who died in 1997, he wants to design a crow incorporating his late grandfather’s initials. He believes that crows help carry a soul from the land of the living to the land of the dead.

When asked what his Jewish grandfather might think about Dunn permanently memorializing him on his body, Dunn said, “He would probably tell me it is a stupid idea. But he was a major influence in my life and he meant a lot to me.”

Tattooed Against Their Will

SUSAN JACOBS
Jewish Journal Staff

Many Holocaust survivors bear numbers on their arms tattooed by Nazis in the concentration camps. These Jews were branded with tattoos that they didn’t choose.

Although the memories of the atrocities they experienced can never be erased, some survivors have tried to erase the physical evidence by using laser surgery to remove their tattoos. Others wear their numbers proudly, echoing the sentiments of Eli Wiesel who said, “In today’s world, you need to be counted among the victims.”

Sonia Weitz, a survivor from Peabody and author of the book, I Promised I Would Tell, does not have a number tattooed on her arm.
“When my sister and I arrived at Auschwitz, it was very busy. We were standing in line to have our heads shaved and to be tattooed. But sometimes even the German machine breaks down,” she remembers. “Although we were assigned numbers, they didn’t have time to tattoo us. To this day, I cannot remember my number,” she adds.

Weitz has an 18-year-old granddaughter who lives in Israel. Although the young woman really wanted to get a tattoo on her ankle, she abstained out of respect for her grandmother. Weitz appreciates her sensitivity and admits that it would upset her if her granddaughter got a tattoo.

“In Auschwitz they took away our names and our identities and referred to us by a number. It was very dehumanizing and demeaning,” says Weitz.

“Every kid in Tel Aviv has a tattoo, and I understand how young people including my granddaughter feel, but many young people today have no sense of history. It’s not just about the Holocaust. If they studied history, they would understand that tattoos bring up issues about slavery and branding. To me, it’s mutilation and it’s just not Jewish,” she adds.

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People in the News

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Arts & Entertainment

Heeb: Not Just for Young Jewish Hipsters

ANDREW MARCHESSEAULT
Jewish Journal Staff

It’s no secret that the toughest audience for the Jewish press to reach is the 18 to 24 set. Few have attempted to capture the attention of this group, and even fewer have been bold enough to put any plan into action. But who better to determine the tastes of these college kids than folks who were in college not too long ago themselves? Such is the idea behind Heeb, the now 18-month-old upstart magazine out of Manhattan determined to go where no Jew has gone before.

“Global domination,” says Josh Neuman, when asked about the goals of Heeb. Neuman, currently the edgy publication’s music editor, is one of the founding editors of the magazine and will take over as its editor and publisher later this year. If Neuman’s ambitions seem a bit outsized, take them with a grain of salt; Heeb is an irreverent magazine, more akin to alternative publications such as Fader, Paper, or even the parody newspaper The Onion, than The Forward or other bastions of traditional Jewish journalism.

“We’re just trying to tell the truth,” says Neuman, a truth that he thinks is best interpreted when embracing wit and diversity of culture rather than, say, a hard-line Jewish bent.

The magazine’s origins can be traced back to the efforts of a young Columbia grad named Jennifer Bleyer, who applied for a $60,000 grant from the Joshua Venture Fellowship, an organization that provides start-up funding for young Jewish entrepreneurs, and which is partially funded by legendary director Steven Spielberg. Bleyer based the operation in Manhattan and quickly assembled her staff and resources. From this seed money sprung Heeb, additionally titled The New Jew Review, a publication that would put Jewish culture in an urban context, in particular New York City, where it blends with the cultures of the biggest melting pot in the world.

In February 2002, Heeb hit the newsstands, and attention quickly followed. “The early press focused on our name,” says Neuman of the magazine’s title. The often derogatory word was deemed offensive by some, while others saw Heeb as the embracing of a slur, much like the homosexual community has taken back the word “queer.”

Many in the latter camp also saw Heeb as the manifestation of something they had been looking for all of their lives: a publication that actually spoke to young Jews. It is ironic, says Neuman, that a magazine that shied away from overt spirituality was looked on with “religious-like awe,” as a “messiah” of the publishing world.

What Heeb contains is an amalgam of current events, popular culture, and irreverent humor, which combines to create…well, Jewish culture. Past issues of the quarterly have featured a Neil Diamond centerfold, an interview with author and activist Naomi Klein, a photo spread on Jewfros, and a “battle” of bar mitzvah bands. “I don’t even think Heeb is a Jewish magazine,” says Neuman, who feels that its content appeals to Jews and non-Jews alike. “I have my Jew-dar on all the time,” he says, which leads to a magazine with a Jewish theme, but not necessarily one with a Jewish agenda.

Due to the avalanche of press that descended upon the new niche magazine, it is no wonder that the first issue of Heeb is now sold out, with nary an issue to spare for even staff members. But, of course, with sales of such magnitude come expectations, which Heeb has worked hard to meet with the two issues that followed the premiere. The magazine now has 2,500 subscribers, a circulation of 25,000, and has, according to Neuman, an “incredibly high sell-through rate” of those published issues. The magazine continues to receive subsidies from various philanthropic foundations, which, Neuman says, will float Heeb through at least July of 2004.

But despite Heeb’s positive press and sold-out issues, the magazine is still just breaking even. “I hope to pay my staff,” says the 31-year-old Neuman of the next step in the magazine’s maturation. By staff he means contributors, as Neuman is the only full-time employee of the publication. And though the role of head honcho might not be familiar to him, Neuman, a graduate of Brown and a Harvard-trained professor at NYU in his spare time, is confident he can make Heeb both popular and profitable. “It’s a true labor of love,” he says, which takes a real “act of chutzpah” to pull off.

A full year-and-a-half after its much-hyped debut, Heeb is still riding its initial wave of success, with the hope that the crest is still beyond the horizon. Neuman and his collaborators have been creative in their marketing strategy, holding “cultural events” such as storytelling sessions in Manhattan, and throwing launch parties across the country with one in Boston coming up in the fall. The curious among us can currently pick up a copy of Heeb in any Tower Records, Borders, or Barnes & Noble in the nation, or see the issue at heebmagazine.com, which is being re-launched with significant improvements in October. We may even see a Heeb in hardcover, as Neuman reports that they have a book deal in the works for an irreverent take on the history of western civilization.

Perhaps Neuman and his gang are closer to global domination than any of us previously imagined. Better yet for them, all it’s taken is a few good ideas formulated around “beer and pizza” in an East Village apartment…and of course a lot of hard work. Neuman is proud that he has “something to do with the tradition of Jewish press,” but is also happy to subvert those traditions by producing a magazine that, as he says, “reflects our interests and sensibilities,” as well as those of his readers.

The diversity of Heeb’s readership shows just how much Jewish culture has merged with a world culture, one that can be found thriving on the streets of New York. The magazine is not just for young Jews, but for all young people who embrace this type of cultural immersion, and who can, as Neuman says, “love Judaism, and be critical of it at the same time. Anyone can enjoy Heeb,” he says. You’ve just got to subscribe.

Press Passed Through Salem

“I consider it my life-long project to document whatever small part I can of the endless spectrum of human life,” says Heeb contributing photographer Sara Press. Although she lived for many years in New York City and has recently moved to San Francisco, much of the inspiration for her life’s mission can be traced to her childhood years in Salem. At age 12, Press moved with her mother, mystery writer Margaret Press, from Cambridge to the Salem Willows, where the elder Press still happily resides.

Although the 28-year-old Press spent only a brief amount of time living in Salem, having attended high school in Boston and college at Columbia in New York, she looks back on those years with much fondness, and considers the city her permanent home.

“Salem is such a great and bizarre combination of supernatural and mundane; industrial and touristy;” she says, “and deliciously full of gypsies, retirees, witches, families, criminals, detectives, tourists, artists, and sweet, sweet neighbors.”

In those formative years, Press’ surroundings only fed her fascination with photography. Through her association with Heeb, she can photograph an equally intriguing array of characters and get in touch with her Jewish heritage.

“I am having a fabulous time learning about modern Jewish culture across the board,” says Press, “seeing at one end of the spectrum the intense emotion and serious ancient tradition passing across several generations at the wedding ceremonies, and on the other working with the rowdy, outrageous revolutionaries over at Heeb.”

Check out Press’s photography at www.sarapress.com, and get a quirky insider’s view of Salem at www.margaretpress.com.

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Editorial

Roadmap: The Problem is Arafat

The Middle East roadmap, unveiled with so much fanfare last May, is almost dead. It is expiring along with the hopes for any lasting peace in the Middle East.

In retrospect, how could it be otherwise?

The roadmap required the dismantling of the Palestinians’ terrorist infrastructure. Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, however well intentioned he might be, clearly lacks the power to make that happen. He has been outfoxed at every turn by the man he supposedly replaced — Yasser Arafat. Arafat remains, despite U.S.efforts to isolate him, the real leader of the Palestinian people. He commands the major security forces and the allegiance of the people.

Abbas was no doubt right when he said it would cause a civil war for him to crack down on the terrorists — a war he would probably lose.
But he is lost anyway, a figurehead with no power. As long as the terrorists retain their ability to blow up the peace process by recruiting suicide bombers, how can there ever be peace? In the horrible incident on August 21, a 29-year-old Imam from the West Bank city of Hebron managed to board a bus full of ultra-Orthodox children and adults returning from a visit to the Western Wall. Then he blew himself up, killing 21 people including five children. “I thank God that my husband has become a martyr,” his widow told the press.

So where do we go from here? Let’s step back and look at the options. Option One: Evict any Arab who won’t take a vow of loyalty to the Israeli state. This would apply to Israeli Arabs, as well as Arab refugees in the West Bank and Gaza. Option Two: Absorb Arab refugees into the existing Jewish state. Three: Continue the current state of war. Four: Seek a peaceful two-state solution.

If it weren’t for much of the world insisting on a two-state solution, we would favor Option One. Let’s face it, six Arab nations invaded the newly formed, U.N.-sanctioned State of Israel in 1948, creating the refugee problem when — against all odds — they lost. Repeat: There would be no Arab refugees but for the 1948 Arab war of aggression. Why should Israel be responsible for the refugees the Arab world caused?

Option Two is a time bomb. In time, the Arabs would outnumber Jews in Israel and we could kiss the Jewish state goodbye. Option Three, the status quo, is intolerable, and Option Four is impossible as long as Arafat is in power, terrorists are free to wreak their havoc, and Palestinian schools teach hatred of Jews to their children.

It’s time for the United States to stop pressing Israel for concessions to meet its roadmap for peace. There can be no peace without security for Israel, and no security for Israel as long as Arafat holds power. It’s time for the U.S. to face up to that reality.

MARK ARNOLD
Jewish Journal Editor/Publisher

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Local Columnists

The President, the Professor and the Lithuanian Grandmother

DOV BURT LEVY
Jewish Journal North of Boston

Dov Burt Levy is a Salem, MA based columnist. He can be reached at dblevy@columnist. com..

Note: National Grandparents’ Day falls on September 7 this year, a national holiday signed into law by President Carter in 1978. This column celebrates that holiday with love to my grandparents.

My grandmother, Nellie Lewis of Revere and Boston’s West End, fled from Lithuania to America over 100 years ago, one step ahead of real horror and terror-and never forgot it till the day she died.

During the 1950s and 1960s in America, people often asked me, as they no doubt asked you: “Where are you from?”
I could have answered: My grandparents were born in Lithuania; their great-great-grandparents came from Spain, before that Baghdad, and before that Jerusalem.

Too much information. So usually I’d say — which is what they were searching for anyhow — that I was Jewish. Occasionally, just to be cantankerous, I’d give them Lithuania to chew on, which became a minor family story.

On a recent birthday I got a surprise. A party, with cake, gifts and a big book of birthday greetings from sixty relatives, friends, former co-workers, politicians and celebrities.

I opened the book. The first page was a color picture of a handsome man in a regal setting. The inscription read: “To Burt Levy with best wishes, Valdas Adamkus.” You guessed it: The president of Lithuania.

The guests delighted in this very official recognition of my obscure Lithuanian heritage, and the rest of the evening went by in a rush of happy memories as I read all of the letters.

But something was bugging me. That face and name from Lithuania were familiar, and it wasn’t because I read the Vilnius Times every day.

So I e-mailed my former boss at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington. “Burt,” he wrote back, “you remember Valdas Adamkus. He worked with us at EPA.”

Now I did remember. Adamkus was the Director of EPA’s Chicago Regional Office. He grew up in Lithuania and, according to news reports, fought Nazis and communists before fleeing in the late 1940s.

He and his family immigrated to the U.S., where he earned an engineering degree, became a leader in the Lithuanian émigré community and began a government career-which is where our paths crossed. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Adamkus was invited back to Lithuania and ran for president, a post he held from 1998 to 2002.

A week later I told my family that I wished I could have told my grandmother: “Bubbie,” I’d have told her, “among the 8000 employees at the government agency I worked for in Washington was a man named Adamkus. We both finished government work and went to live overseas. I went to Israel and had many jobs including kibbutz farm worker, professor and writer. He went to Lithuania and became the President.”

“What do you think Bubbie would have made of that?” I asked my family.“She would have said,” my then 10-year-old granddaughter Jenny piped up, “Tell me, Beryla, if he became president of Lithuania, how come you never made it to president of Israel?’”.

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Community Pulse: How ‘Bout Those Hamas Guys?

ELLEN GOLUB
Jewish Journal North of Boston

Ellen Golub teaches journalism at Salem State College. She may be reached at elkele@attbi.co

As many as 100,000 people (men) swarmed the streets of Gaza City in an angry funeral procession for Ismail Abu Shanab, the Hamas leader. He was killed by Israel in a targeted missile strike in retaliation for the suicide bomb that killed 20 people on a Jerusalem bus.
Gunmen fired into the air. Loud speakers blared: “We advise the leaders of the so-called Israel to prepare plastic bags to collect the remains of the victims of our coming strong retaliation.” At the scene of the August 21 missile strike, furious Palestinians dipped their hands in the victims’ blood and promised rivers of blood would soon flow in Tel Aviv. At the funeral tens of thousands shouted for revenge.

We know what we think about the bombings. But there’s a world of others out there who have their own reactions, and their own theories. Here is my fictionalized version of what others may be saying:

Esther Rosen, retired, housewife: “Vey iz mir (woe is me). Was that Thursday already? Time goes so fast you can forget. Yeah, of course I remember Abu Shanab, the boy was always with a gun. Oy! They blow up so quickly these days.”
Bryan Goldberg, 18, college freshman: “Those @#$%ing savages! Swarming like maggots. If I were Israel, I’d drop a nice, big bomb on the funeral. Poof! No more Palestinian problem.

Gladys Tilton, 36, manager: “I feel very sorry for their loss. There’s just too much sadness in this world. Where is all the violence getting anyone? And all of it in the name of religion! I tell you, those Israelians and Palestinians ought to be ashamed of themselves. It’s always tit for tat with them. When are they going to learn?”

Mort Bernstein, 58, professor: “It’s a tragedy of communications, really. Westerners don’t understand the nuances of Arab speech, where exaggeration and over-assertion are essentially only stylistic devices. Words in Arab speech do not necessarily connote action. In other words, I don’t think anyone in Tel Aviv really needs to go out and buy Hefty bags.”

Sandy Fruchtgang, none-of-your-business, grandmother: “I told my granddaughter to cancel that trip to Israel. Those Palestinians are out of their minds. I don’t mind telling you they frighten me with all that blood, —and the screaming and shooting! Life is too precious to risk going there right now. The Israelis can handle it. They’re used to it. But my Cindy should wait until everything quiets down. She can visit Israel when things are better.”

Jamie Orleans, 24, union organizer: “What do you expect from people who’ve been under occupation for 35 years? I’d say they’ve been incredibly patient with the Israelis. All the checkpoints, the daily humiliations, the degradation. If you wonder why we’re in Iraq — or why the Twin Towers went down, or why we’ve got half the problems in the world that we have — I think you should take a good look at the Jews.

They’ve got quite a track record.”

Mona Freedman, 41, psychoanalyst: “It’s all about childhood. Arab society encourages arrested ego development. A negative cathexis of the self. Consequent narcissism, fluctuating between depression and rage. The childhood fear of authority translates into an anal conscience, not a genuine super-ego. The cultural fear and hatred of women becomes a conflict about their own gender identification.

These Palestinian men are using this particular event to exercise their gender anxiety and narcissistic rage. What to do? For the short term, I’d prescribe a massive dose of Prozac or even an anti-psychotic. But the long term solution? Two thousand years on the couch.”

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Slice of Life
Time to Visit the Folks

PHYLLIS DINERMAN
Jewish Journal North of Boston

@Phyllis Dinerman 2003. Phyllis Dinerman is a resident of Marblehead and Boynton Beach, FL. She may be reached at phyllis@dinerman.com

The “dog days” of August are coming to a close, and it’s time to start thinking about returning to Florida. I don’t think we’ll remain in Marblehead for the holidays; we will attend a temple down south. I’ll miss sitting with my family in temple and sharing dinner with them after New Year services. I hope they understand that my heart is with them, my family. But my home is now in Florida.

Guess I will go visit the folks and say good-bye. I’ll take along a yarmulke and a siddur so I can chant the proper prayers. I like to go when it’s quiet there (although I doubt it’s ever noisy), and no one else is around.

I talk to my folks, tell them what’s happening, ask their advice on certain family issues. I don’t have to worry that an argument will ensue if they disagree. They really don’t talk back although I know what their words would be if they could answer me.

I’ll tell them all about their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren. They never had the chance to meet the great-grandchildren but they know all about them since I am forever talking about the ainichah.

When I return to Florida, I still talk to my folks. I talk to them when I’m driving the car. Crazy place, right? But it’s quiet, and I like to have my private time with them. Sometimes, my eyes mist over, and I have a hard time seeing the cars in front of me. That’s when I know I’ve been spending too much time in conversation and not enough time concentrating on the road.

Well, I’m almost at my folks’ place now. I see the gates are open, as usual. No need to worry about anyone leaving. It’s quiet today since it’s still early for family members to visit other family members. There are still a few more weeks before the Jewish holidays. I’m sure you figured out where I am today.

I’m at the cemetery. I’ve come to see my folks before I leave for Florida. I know my sister will visit them while I’m gone but I will not be able to visit them until next summer. But I’ll be talking to them. They’re in my heart, and I take them everywhere. They even come to Florida with me and enjoy the sun.

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Op-Ed

Tough Questions For The Quartet

JONATHAN FRIENDLY

Jonathan Friendly is the national editor of Jewish Renaissance Media

The last three weeks have seen the effective shredding of the road map for Mideast peace that was put together by the international Quartet of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the U