| The Jewish Journal Archive | ||||||||||||||||
| February 25 - March 10, 2005 | ||||||||||||||||
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Local
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Local StoriesOn the Front Lines: Local Jewish Soldiers in Iraq Gary
Band PEABODY — Among some 200 Jewish men and women who have served in the U.S. military in Iraq are three members of Temple Ner Tamid in Peabody who recently returned from duty in the embattled region. They
are: Major Donna Lehman, a wife and mother of five, who for 18 years has
been an Army Reservist Nurse and served “in country” for 20
months (Feb. ‘03-Aug. ‘04); Captain Ben Ring, a West Point
graduate and Armor Officer who served for three months (March-June ‘04);
and Captain Ramit Ring (wife of Ben), a Transportation Officer and fellow
West Point graduate, who was in Iraq from April ‘03 to March ‘04.
For the first six months of her tour, Lehman was stationed at a Combat Support Hospital across from the Baghdad Airport where she saw approximately 800 patients, many of whom suffered from injuries incurred by IEDs, improvised explosive devices. Lehman went through trauma training prior to deployment, but said nothing could have prepared her for the injuries she treated. “You never get enough or the right training for what you see,” she said. Never activated before, she was told to prepare to be called up six months beforehand. And as it turned out, her FST served the longest tour out of seven teams tasked with treating patients throughout the war-torn country. When the other Combat Support Hospital moved from the north in Dogwood to Baghdad, Lehman and her team was transferred out to serve with the 26th Infantry along the Tigris and Euphrates River. “There was a lot of activity, mostly at night,” she said. “We had to be ready to move all the time. It was pretty risky territory and not uncommon to hear gunfire and bombing all the time. Some bombs that exploded nearby could literally take your breath away.” On
one occasion in Ibaseena at Saddam’s personal hospital, a bomb hit
the building and Lehman says that she and her roommate were gasping for
breath and trembling in their boots. “I’ll never forget that,”
she said. Later, based at Camp Chosen next to an electric power plant in Iscandur, where Iraqis out numbered soldiers 2 to 1,1600 to 800, Lehman and her team stood by to treat any casualties that might occur while the troops were out on patrol. And though there were some injuries and close calls, they were far fewer than she saw at the CSH. She and her team also treated Iraqis. “We had to remain neutral, but it was pretty hard on some injured American soldiers to be in an operating or recovery room next to someone who may have played a role in their injury.” Despite all the activity, Lehman said there was a fair amount of downtime. And although there were times when a visiting performer like Robin Williams or Bob Hope visited the troops, the enlisted men and women had priority. Joking that “rank no longer has its privileges,” Lehman said, “If you’re not taking care of your troops, you’re not a good officer.” But for her and the 200 or so other Jewish soldiers serving in Iraq, there was a man who made life there a little better. Rabbi Ackerson, a Lieutenant Colonel chaplain from Connecticut, was stationed in Kuwait. “He made sure that that all the Jews serving in the region kept in touch,” Lehman said. “He used every minute of the day to serve the Jewish population. He was incredible in the way he engaged with and comforted people, knew the history of the region, and made people feel like everything was going to be ok.” Lehman’s team had only one other Jew, a Major Dr. Feldman from Rhode Island; and in the 26th Infantry, Sgt. Gold from New York. Many of the Jewish troops celebrated Passover with a seder inside Saddam’s palace. In addition to the seder food provided by the Chaplain corps, Israel also sent hundreds of boxes of wine and fruit and candy. “All dressed in white, the rabbi encouraged us to recline and revel in the fact that in a country where it was not safe to identify as a Jew, we are all now celebrating this holiday here freely.” Also in attendance at the seder was a former Iraqi Jew living in New York. Lehman, who returned to the States in August, is very happy to be back with her husband, a retired Air Force JAG officer, and their five children. She is back at work at Lahey, hopes to go for her master’s degree, and will leave on February 26 for New Jersey’s Fort Dix to train to be an Observer/Controller, evaluating the combat readiness of units scheduled for deployment. “A lot is expected of me, but I’m excited to do it,” she said. Army Captains Ben and Ramit Ring met at West Point where Ben graduated in 1996 and Ramit in 1998. A Peabody native and member of Ner Tamid since birth, Ben, 30, attended St. John’s Prep and said he wanted the challenge offered by a military college. He didn’t go in thinking about a career in the military, but said “it grew on me.” Ramit, 28, who was born and raised until she was five in Israel, grew up in Oklahoma. She went in thinking also about the challenge, job security and change of pace. “My graduating class was larger than the population of my home town,” she said. Later,
though separated for a time, the couple was assigned to the same base,
Fort Hood in the center of Texas. They married in 2001, combining, they
said, the “best aspects of a military and Jewish wedding.” Now living in Peabody with their 2-and-half year-old daughter Sarah, Ben is attending Boston University for a degree in computer science, and Ramit is at UMass Boston for a degree in English. They’ll both finish in the spring of 2006. But
in addition to the application process, it has been a long road for both
of them to arrive at this moment. Instructed to drive at 50 mph, she said the convoy traveled much faster to avoid being fired on, but still it took them 14 hours to arrive at their destination. On the way back on April 11, the convoy was hit by RPG fire, but all the soldiers made it out. Ramit
and her Transportation Division made many trips back and forth across
the country, bringing supplies, mail and troops to and from where they
needed to be. Always a target on the open roads, and often not able to
build permanent base camp, she and others had to sleep outside on top
of the trucks in full battle gear. “Not all we saw was horrible,” she said. “The work we did in the communities and our interactions with the kids showed us how thankful many people were that we were there. In 10 or 15 years, the kids we interacted with will see the difference we made.” Ben, who served in Bosnia in 1997 and Kosovo in 1999, was in command of the all-active 100-man Company A of the 1st Cavalry Division that he had commanded for 20 months prior while stationed at Fort Hood. In Kuwait for the first two weeks, Ben, his seven junior officers and the rest of the company were relocated and permanently stationed at Camp Falcon in southern Baghdad, where he says they took mortar and rocket fire every day. The company went out on between 8 and10 patrols all day everyday and either killed or captured many insurgents. Though
he allows that the tactics of the invasion could be debated, Ben felt
that it was necessary to go in to Iraq and that the American and allied
presence is making a positive difference. “We’re making more
friends than enemies,” he said. “For every one person who
doesn’t want us there, there’s another 100 who do.” They too knew Rabbi Ackerson and appreciated what he did. “That man went out of his way to do anything he could to take care of the Jewish soldiers,” Ramit said. “He brought a Torah scroll from New York, a lulav and etrog, and boxes of supplies that he could have sent on convoy trucks but delivered personally.” There were a few Jewish soldiers in Ramit’s division, where she was the lay leader, made sure services were held, and tried to help people find a “drop of faith in the desert.” Another advantage to being Jewish in Iraq was the kosher Meals Ready to Eat (MREs). They both attest, “They were so much better than the regular ones.” World
Series Trophy Wows Temple Emanu-El Susan
Jacobs MARBLEHEAD
— Cradling the sparkling gold and silver ornament in his arms like
a torah, an attendant solemnly carried the Red Sox World Series trophy
to a velvet-covered table on the bimah of Temple Emanu-El, where Rabbi
David Meyer stood. Congregants clothed in Red Sox gear rose from their
pews to get a better glimpse of the shiny showpiece, a physical reminder
of the team’s glorious 2004 season. For a modest donation, congregants could have their photos professionally taken with the two-foot tall memento. Approximately 150 individuals and families patiently waited in line to do so, according to temple executive director, Judith Emanuel. “The trophy is currently touring the 351 cities and towns of Massachusetts, and was scheduled to be in Swampscott and Marblehead,” explained Lev, who is executive vice president of sales and marketing for ANC Sports, a firm that provides signage technology at Fenway Park. “My wife Carol is co-chair of our temple’s 50th anniversary celebration. I asked if the Marblehead stop could include this event, which is the third of four events connected to the celebration,” he said. Lev’s request was granted. In addition, Lev invited Dr. Charles Steinberg, executive vice president of public affairs for the Boston Red Sox, to speak at both the breakfast and a family assembly in the sanctuary. Steinberg, a member of the Red Sox management team, shared insider highlights of the team’s miraculous season. “This trophy is the symbol of an achievement, but it is not to be worshipped,” he said. The compelling orator spoke eloquently about unity, teamwork and, most importantly, faith. “Throughout
history, God has sent us down a road filled with obstacles and despair;
wanting to know if we still believe. Year after year, at the Passover
seder, we retell the story about parting of the Red Sea. We teach our
children about Chanukah — about the miracle of the oil lasting for
eight days. We cherish the miracles from thousands of years ago, but must
acknowledge that we just witnessed a modern-day miracle,” said Steinberg. The affable Steinberg, who previously worked for the Baltimore Orioles and the San Diego Padres, deftly fielded questions from the audience about the current steroid controversy, the botched A-Rod deal, and the arch rival Yankees. When asked if the team will bring aboard more Jewish ballplayers, he quipped, “Although we had Gabe Kapler and Kevin Youkilis, we weren’t even close to a minyan.” Shortly after the Temple Emanu-El event, Steinberg left for Ft. Myers, FL to prepare for spring training. “We must close the book on 2004 in order to get ready for the 2005 season, but you don’t have to,” said Steinberg. “How do we follow up this up? Hopefully we’ll do it again, but maybe next time it will be a little easier,” he said. The Real Crisis in Jewish Continuity Michael
H. Steindhardt I’ve gotten into the terrible habit of reading the Styles section of the Sunday New York Times and counting the number of Jews marrying non-Jews in Jewish ceremonies and in non-Jewish ceremonies. The experience is generally dispiriting for those of us who are concerned with Jewish demography. But this is only a minor manifestation of the crisis facing our community. The crisis is expressed not only in rates of intermarriage, which seem to hover around 50 percent, but in our population statistics, which are at best stagnant and more probably reflective of a decline. American Jews are marrying later and having fewer children relative to previous Jewish generations and to their non-Jewish counterparts. But the crisis is not limited to demography. In the area of Jewish literacy, popular films such as Garden State, which take for granted the remoteness of temple attendance for contemporary Jews, only scratch the surface of the malaise. The silent majority of non-Orthodox Jews is well on its way to Jewish disappearance. They have no representation in our communal structures; nor does the community occupy itself with the challenge of preventing their slipping away. Philanthropists have not risen to the challenge of shoring up Jewish identity. Can you name a serious non-Orthodox American Jewish philanthropist below the age of 50? There may be one or two, but it truly would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Moreover, we are talking about an extraordinarily wealthy community that is generous to secular philanthropies. According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the biggest individual gifts of 2002 ranged from $100 million to $375 million. Of the 10 philanthropists, six were Jewish. Not a single one gave anything meaningful to a Jewish cause. Today, perhaps 20 percent of Jewish giving goes to Jewish causes. In the middle of the 20th century, it was about 50 percent. The absence of philanthropic investment is painful for those of us who care about the Jewish future. If a relative is gravely ill, we spare no expense to save them. We attempt the riskiest maneuvers and sometimes invest in the most outlandish cures. We should behave no differently with the health of our people. Currently, the Jewish community is facing a dire crisis of identity, affiliation, and knowledge. Where is the sense of crisis among our people? The lingering fear of anti-Semitism, regardless of whether it is based on current reality, summons millions of dollars for Jewish defense agencies and Holocaust memorials. But when it comes to reinforcing Jewish identity, we come up short. Programs that emphasize spiritual renewal and cultural joy are funded almost as an afterthought. American Jews have yet to understand that victimization is an insufficient basis for identity. Even in an era of increased openness and tolerance, the American Jewish community believes that community cohesion depends on external threats and bogeymen. When we ponder why so few Jews are interested in perpetuating Jewish life, we need look no further than these skewed priorities. After all, who would want to connect with a Jewish heritage painted predominantly as tragedy? I base my philanthropy on a single overarching principle: that Jewish renaissance cannot be premised on a withdrawal from society, or on yesterday’s preoccupations with fear and victimhood. Freedom has been good to the Jewish people. We therefore must find ways to intertwine a vibrant Jewish culture with life in an open, democratic society. Making Judaism competitive with American secular culture, however difficult, is the great challenge of our day. For the non-Orthodox, we must revisit our religious practices because, for most of us, our present religious observance simply does not provide sufficient spiritual rewards. Non-Orthodox Jews must come to recognize the tremendous power of Jewish education. We must convince young Jews that their community welcomes not only their dollars but also their ideas and leadership. One way to reverse course is to base Jewish identity overwhelmingly on positive aspects of the Jewish experience – the connection to one’s people, the emphasis on history and culture, and the wonders of Jewish joy. Birthright israel, for example, operates on the principle that the Jewish people is a series of interlinked chains; if we strengthen just one of these links, we strengthen the whole. At the annual birthright israel Mega Event in Jerusalem, thousands of Jews from across the world gather to celebrate Jewish history, culture, and destiny together. I know of no better expression of Jewish joy than this culmination of the 10-day trip, which emphasizes celebration and unity — two quintessentially Jewish concepts that are often ignored. It is time for Diaspora Jews to replace victimhood with joy by assuring that more young Jews receive the most important Jewish learning and socializing experiences — day schools, camps, youth movements and Hillel, and Israel travel and study. Jews who grow up with these experiences show dramatically higher rates of commitment and lower rates of assimilation and intermarriage. Making these experiences “standard equipment” will require philanthropy beyond all past parameters. Creating such a universally-available infrastructure of freedom would cost billions annually but would assure the Jewish future. Last year, I proposed an initial $100 million education fund to be matched and spent by local communities to bring the total to $500 million, thereby galvanizing new funding and reprioritizing Jewish philanthropy toward education. As I write, Harvard University is endowed with $22.1 billion. I am sure that much of this rich endowment is from grateful Jewish alumni who were determined that Harvard’s contribution to humanity be permanently assured. I say that the Jewish people and civilization — which has given the world the faiths of three billion people, immeasurable advances in science, law, medicine, business, and moral leadership — deserves, nay demands, no fewer billions. There should be no less determination to assure, once and for all, Jewry’s flourishing future. Who will join me in breaking with past parameters of Jewish philanthropy to secure a renaissance for our grandchildren? Who will place the vitality of our people above all other interests? I cannot overemphasize the urgency of the task. Our Jewish future hangs in the balance. Michael Steinhardt, a major Jewish philanthropist, is chairman of the Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation. This essay is the first in an occasional series on the future of the Jewish people. It is reprinted with permission from the Jerusalem Post. Innovative Program Awards CJNH Employees with Shopping Spree Susan
Jacobs CHELSEA — Norine Pasquarello, who works as a nurse at Chelsea Jewish Nursing Home, eagerly fills her shopping basket with cereal, chips and soda. “I almost never buy name brands, so my son is thrilled when I bring home real Frosted Flakes and Doritos,” admits the Saugus mother of three, as she scours the aisles of Barry & Betsy’s, a spotless 800-square foot grocery store located in the basement of the CJNH. When it’s time to check out, no cash is exchanged. Because she works full-time, Pasquarello is allocated 80 points per month. Each item in the store is valued at a certain number of points — for example, an 11-oz. box of Froot Loops costs one point, while a big box of Tide costs five. The cashier scans in all of Pasquarello’s items, and her points are automatically deducted from her account. If she uses up all of her points, she takes home approximately $200 worth of free groceries each month. In addition to groceries, employees can exchange their points for toys, movie passes, or restaurant gift certificates. Norine Pasquarello picks up four movie passes for 24 points. “My daughters and two of their friends will use them tonight to see Million Dollar Baby. Since it typically costs $9 to get into a movie, this saves me lots of money,” she says. Barry & Betsy’s opened in October 2004. CJNH Executive Director Barry Berman and Assistant Administrator Betsy Mullen (for whom the store is named) estimate that it will cost CJNS $250,000 per year to operate the store. To them, however, the project is more than simply a goodwill gesture. “It is a big investment, but we believe it is well worth it,” explains Mullen. “We are sending a message to our employees that they are important to us, and we want them to stay. We want to take good care of our staff, who in turn take good care of our residents.” The CJNH has a very devoted staff. In an era where turnover is high and most hospitals are short-staffed, the CJNH has no openings and a waiting list of people interested in working there. Many, like Pasquarello, have been with the organization for more than two decades, and 57% have worked there for five years or more. “Most of our employees are hard working, determined immigrants from central America and Africa who do the same job, day after day, with a smile on their faces,” says Mullen. “Many are working two jobs or are the sole wage earners in their families. It’s interesting how this new wave of immigrants are taking care of our parents, who were the immigrants years ago.” Mullen stresses that store benefits are in addition to, not in place of, annual raises. After 90 days of work, all 350 employees of Chelsea Jewish Nursing Home, Cohen Florence Levine Assisted Living, and the Florence & Chafetz Home for Specialized Care are eligible to receive points. Points are pro-rated for part-time employees. Employees who don’t use all their monthly points can carry their balances over, or donate unused points to other employees. Employees are genuinely grateful for the store. “This helps out, believe me,” say Julio Hernandez, who is originally from El Salvador. The employee, who works in the kitchen, uses his points to buy household staples like juice, cereal and toilet paper. “ This is a very nice idea. Thank you to Mr. Barry and Mrs. Gilda.” Mullen says that the free groceries enable workers to take care of other expenses. “One employee recently came up to me and said, ‘I can afford to pay my gas bill this month because I got my groceries for free.’ During the holidays we stocked toys, CD players, photo albums, Red Sox caps and other gift items that employees might not have gone out and bought on their own,” she said. Most of the shopping is done by CJNH Foundation President Gilda Richman and store manager Armando Alarcon, who scour local supermarkets for bargains on brand name groceries, which they buy in case lots. They focus on staples like peanut butter and jelly, canned vegetables, soup, soda, and paper products, and have recently added refrigerated items such as eggs, cream cheese and American cheese. At the request of their Latin employees, they have brought in some ethnic products such as masa flour and Goya canned beans. “It’s a different type of store, for people who make a difference,” says Mullen, who hopes other large organizations are inspired to follow CJNH’s lead.
Local Kids Raise Awareness for Emergency Fund Amy
Sessler Powell From Gann Academy in Waltham to North Shore Hebrew School in Swampscott and Shore Country Day School in Beverly, children are fanned out across 10 local schools to help raise awareness for the Jewish Community Emergency Fund, a partnership between the Jewish Federation of the North Shore, the Jewish Community Foundation of the North Shore and Jewish Family Service of the North Shore. “We never want anyone to choose between turning up their heat, buying a bag of groceries or paying their medical bills,” said Brooke Patkin, 16, of Swampscott, who is spearheading the effort. “No one should ever have to lose their home or have their utilities shut off due to financial crisis.” To raise awareness, the students are making blue “Live Generously” bracelets available to their classmates and friends who make a minimum $5 donation to the fund. So far, their grassroots efforts have raised $4,000 of the $27,000 raised so far. The Jewish Community Emergency Fund was started two years ago by Jewish community leaders in response to the economic downturn and the growing need in the community. In the past, 35 families have contacted Jewish Family Service for grants that helped prevent utility shut-offs, loss of housing or helped to pay medical bills. After the huge push two years ago, the fund had a balance of $50,000, but had gone down to $5,000. The goal is to raise $45,000 to meet the current need in the community. In the past two months, the community has raised $25,000. Hallie Pliner, class president at Cohen Hillel Academy in Marblehead, said the class officers have made sure the entire schools knows about the campaign. “We’ve brought the bracelets down to the lower grades and many students have bought them.” Brooke described the grassroots efforts as a win for everyone. “It is wonderful that so many kids can come together for a common purpose.” Brooke had approached Federation with an idea for a tzedakah project and was matched with the “Wear the Blue” project. It was a natural for her since she had worked on it two years earlier when in eighth grade at Cohen Hillel. Her parents, Randall and Marjorie Patkin are supporting her effort by helping to underwrite the cost of 3,800 bracelets. In addition to the kids’ grassroots efforts, Brooke has addressed numerous community boards, written letters to donors and newspapers and worked tirelessly to spread the word and solicit donations to the fund. “We still have to raise $20,000,” she said. “In the past two months there were 60 requests for assistance from the Emergency Fund.” Dorothy Tatelman, co-chair of the 2004 Community Campaign cabinet, praised the initiative of Federation and the Patkin family. “This is what it means to be a Jew. We can make the world a better place, but only with the leadership and commitment of people like Brooke Patkin and her family.” For more information on the Jewish Community Emergency Fund, to make a donation or to order a bracelet, contact Arlyne Greenspan, Jewish Community Foundation assistant, at 978-564-0708, email agreenspan@jfns.org or visit www.jewishnorthshore.org. For a grant from the Jewish Community Emergency Fund, call Jewish Family Service, 978-741-7878.
Features Lest
We Forget Herbert
Belkin In 1945, Jewish prisoners in the German concentration camps were hovering between life and death. Rumors had reached them that the allies were advancing and the prisoners prayed they would soon be liberated. The rumors were true; the allies were advancing on both fronts, pushing the Germans closer to Berlin. With the end of the war in sight, the American, British and Russian soldiers were given one order — to press on, to squeeze the German army into a tighter and tighter circle. As the soldiers advanced, however, they were unaware of the concentration camps or the dead and dying prisoners they would find there. In the 60 years since the end of the war, the world has learned about the Holocaust and the Nazi goal of eliminating European Jewry. But the soldiers chasing the German armies across Europe knew little about Hitler’s Final Solution or even the existence of the camps. It was with surprise and foreboding that the soldiers came across the death factories. As they approached the fences of the camps, the first indication that something was wrong was the horrible stench. We have all seen the unnerving pictures of the skin and bone survivors when they were liberated. The one thing we could not experience was the smell of the camps or the reaction of the prisoners when they realized that they were liberated. These descriptions by Jewish American soldiers who liberated the camps describe what they saw and smelled. The stench from the camps could truly be called the smell of evil. Maurice Sherry, a soldier with the 12th Armored Division, remembers approaching the Landsberg Concentration Camp, “You could smell the stench from miles away.” Julius Bernstein, who served with the 12th Armored Division, recalls, “…one thing I can’t forget even as I am talking with you now – I can smell the bodies burning…” Dan Evers, an engineer with the 286th Combat Engineer Battalion, recalls that, upon arriving at Dachau, “I was only [in Dachau] a few hours and my strongest recollection is the smell of death…” Carried by the wind, the unholy smell from the crematoria traveled miles from the camps. That’s a fact German civilians living in the area were forcefully reminded of when they made the hollow claim that they had no idea what was going on in the concentration camps. If smell was the Jewish soldiers’ introduction to the camps, it certainly was not their last experience. Their meeting with Jewish survivors proved to be charged with high emotion. Try to imagine Jewish prisoners’ reaction when a soldier said, “Ich bin ahn Judishe soldat (I am a Jewish soldier).” The reaction of emaciated survivors toward their liberators has been described as “almost worshipful.” Steve Ross, a survivor who lives in Boston, describes his liberators, “…when I see them, I see God.” Tragically, many survivors would not long survive their liberation; their bodies were too wasted. Instead of feeding the emaciated survivors spoonful by spoonful, the soldiers unknowingly provided quantities of the food and water that killed them. As she was dying, one Jewish woman soulfully said to her rescuers, “Too late, too late for me.” The survivors always had one question: Who else is alive? This question reflected the survivors’ despesrate need to find family members while knowing the implacable odds set by the Nazi genocide. The survivors’ choice of life after witnessing so many deaths was made abundantly clear once they were settled in Displaced Person camps. In the DP camps, there were a remarkable number of weddings followed by thousands of pregnant Jewish women. The resulting number of births in the camps was the highest birthrate in the world for the years 1946-1948. Regina Spiegel, a survivor living in the Washington, D. C. area, explains how the survivors felt when she was asked if she ever wanted to take revenge on her German captors. Her reply, “…my grandchildren are the revenge because he [Hitler] set out to kill all the Jews.” Herb Belkin is a writer and speaker on the Holocaust, dedicated to preserving its lessons so that this tragedy never happens again. He can be reached at beachbluff@comcast.net. In a Big Inning A Prelude to The Five Jewish Ballplayers You Meet In Heaven Rabbi
Steven Rubinstein In reading the biographies of those players who became Jewish major leaguers during the early decades of the 20th century, if there is a common element to their stories, it is the similarity of their escape from immigrant parents who disapproved of their interest in baseball as a profession for a young Jewish boy. Several books about baseball refer to the ethnic gangs that protected the streets of the individual neighborhoods. In Pete Hamill’s book, Snow in August, an 11-year-old boy by the name of Michael becomes friends with a rabbi who is a refugee from the Holocaust. What brings them together is their fear of the Irish gangs roaming their neighborhood, and their love for baseball. During their several sessions together, the rabbi taught Michael Yiddish and shared with him the stories of his youth about a fictional character called the Golem. This is not the only story set in the early decades of baseball to speak about the malevolent voices of hatred that permeated American society. In his comic book, The Golem’s Mighty Swing, author James Strum captures the fear that often accompanied a nation’s ignorance about the Jews. In this story about a Jewish ball club called “The Stars of David” a team of bearded men barnstormed their way through the countryside of middle America in a broken-down bus, stopping in various towns to play the local teams. Even though curiosity may have brought the local residents to the stands, what often greeted the Stars of David was a great deal of hostility and blatant anti-Semitic remarks based upon stereotyping. Following the suggestion of a promoter to increase attendance and their share of the take, the team billed one of its players as a genuine golem. What the promoter and the team did not realize, in their attempts to increase excitement and sales, the problem with golems in general is that they are creatures of destruction constructed by man, but only God can create beings that have souls. So, the idea was doomed from the start. The person that could be considered most responsible for destroying the soul of the Jewish nation in America during the 1920s and 30s, fueling the fear of a frightened nation, was Henry Ford. He was very much aware of the popularity of baseball and how its reputation shaped the values and the character of this developing country. He was, also, a firm believer in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic pamphlet that blames the Jews for the financial woes of the world. Ford capitalized on the racist stereotyping and anti-Semitism that was prevalent at the time, to fuel his own cause to clean up baseball of “too much Jew.” It is in this environment that several Jewish ball players came to the forefront of the sport — names like Moses Solomon, Andy Cohen, and Al Schacht — that have been forgotten by history; and others who rose to even greater heights on the merits of these predecessors, like Hank Greenberg and Moe Berg. Following in the footsteps of sports writer and author Mitch Albom, in the next several articles I plan to share with you my version of “Five Jewish Ballplayers You Meet In Heaven.” Each of the men I have chosen to highlight have made their contribution not only to American baseball, but also to the rich history of Jews in America’s past-time, making it possible forw players like Shawn Green and Jason Marquis to excel in this modern environment..
South of the Border: A View of The Mexican Jewish Community Ed
Lowenstern Mexico’s Jewish history goes back to 1519 when Conquistador Hernan Cortes landed at Veracruz and marched inland to conquer the indigenous population. With Cortes when he landed was the shipbuilder, Hernando Alonso, a “Converso,” a Jewish convert to Catholicism that resulted from the pressures of the Spanish Inquisition. When Alonso’s Jewish practices were discovered, he was tried, convicted and burned at the stake in 1528. The earliest recorded Rosh Hashanah services were held in 1862 in a Masonic Temple. A Jewish self-help group was organized in 1908 and the first cemetery was dedicated in 1914. Beginning in about 1910, many Jews came from the Middle East and Turkey as a result of the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. They formed the communities of present day Jews in Mexico City. In the 1920s, immigration created the Ashkenazic community. Their first synagogue was constructed in 1923. Before that services were held in rented facilities. As the Jewish communities became more affluent, their centers moved. Nidje Israel, Mexico’s largest Ashkenazic synagogue, seats 1200 people and has some magnificent stained glass windows designed by well-known artist Leonardo Nierman. The Aleppo Community synagogue, Magen David, is modeled after one in Syria. Inside the synagogue, the Chair of Elijah is waiting for delivery to the home of a newborn boy for use in the Brit Milah. The complex is complete with a mikvah in the basement and a separate burial chapel. Monte Sinai is the synagogue of the Damascus Community. But what is the state of the Mexican Jewish community today? To answer this question, we met with Mauricio Lulka, Director General of the Comite Central de la Comunidad Judia de Mexico, with Renee Dayan-Shabot who is the Director of the Tribuna Israelita, and with Rosalynda (Rosita) Cohen and Dr. Larry Wachnowsetsky who are, respectively the editor and publisher of Mexico’s largest Jewish newspaper, Kesher. We found that, unlike Jewish institutions in the U.S., the focus in Mexico is on the community rather than the synagogue. There are six such communities in Mexico City’s Jewish population of 50,000. Each of them operates its own self-help agencies and full-time day school. Tribuna Israelita functions as the organization which deals with anti-Semitism. Ms. Shabot explained, “We see it very clearly in the press. The periodicals have a hard time differentiating between Israel and the Jewish communities of Mexico. Mr. Mauricio Lulka told us that the Comitee Central de la Communidad Judia de Mexico is an umbrella organization responsible for the distribution of funds that benefit the entire Jewish population. “Less than six percent of the marriages are with non-Jewish partners. About 60 percent of the marriages are between the different Jewish communities. “Every Shabbat, the synagogues are almost full,” Renee told us, “and a large percentage of people keep Kosher homes.” Mauricio added, Any conflict arbitration between the communities is binding under Mexican law.” So it is that Jews in Mexico, though different in communal structure from those in the United States, are firm in their faith and united in their support of Israel. In many ways, they present a model for a religious group that is only a miniscule percentage of the entire population. They have maintained their distinct identity while integrating themselves into the fabric of Mexican society. Avoiding Costly Mistakes With Your IRA Mark
S. Singer Editor’s
Note: This is second part of a two-part article on IRA’s. The
first part appeared last issue. Eliminating
the 10% IRS Penalty Section 72t states that if you create a “substantial, equal and periodic” stream of income that lasts for a minimum of five years or until you reach age 59, whichever period is longer, then you can eliminate the 10% penalty. There are three calculation methods and choosing the proper one is crucial. If you need income early, this can save you lots of money that the IRS would normally extract. Required
Minimum Distributions (RMD) There are new calculations that the IRS states must be used. And with the new laws that mandate the custodian of IRA’s to report the year-end value of all IRA’s, the IRS now has the ammunition to impose these penalties. Interestingly, you do not have to take a distribution from all of your IRA’s (assuming you have more than one). Just be careful from where the income comes and that you report it correctly. Inherited
IRA’s (IRD’S) Retired money manager Peter Lynch once wrote: “If you can’t explain it with a crayon in 60 seconds,” then it is too complex. This is one those complex topics that most professionals have trouble with, but you should not. If you are the beneficiary of an IRA and are taking withdrawals from it, and if the estate you inherited was subject to estate taxes, you could be getting taxed double. The IRD deduction could be worth tens of thousands of dollars that your accountant may not have captured. In one recent case, an individual inherited a $3 million taxable estate, which included a $2 million IRA. There was a $545,000 IRD deduction available to offset income that was not being taken. A five-step process can identify whether you have taken full advantage of the tax deduction. Preservation of assets, proper tax planning, stretching the value of IRA’s and understanding the impact of new laws must be a part of an overall strategy in order to make your retirement assets best work for you. Mark Singer CFP is a radio talk show host and president of Safe Harbor Retirement Planning, on the Lynnway in Lynn. He can be reached by atmark55retire@aol.com. Securities offered through Commonwealth Financial Network, member NASD/SIPC.
Single
Situations Dana
Greene I have just a few more hours left of my 20s, and thought I’d take some time to reflect upon this receding decade. It started with a romance. There I was 20 and head over heals for the first time with the Argentinean rabbi’s son. He had red hair and adorable freckles, and together we toasted atop the famous boudoir restaurant, Mr. A’s, with its dark, ambient lighting and burgundy plush velvet couches and décor. At 21, I lived a year in Spain, rode a motorcycle through the tiny streets of Seville. I smoked my first Cuban cigar and drank quarente-tres right out of the bottle. Like most 22-year-olds, I marched into the future as I said goodbye to the college I had come to love in upstate New York. But then I procrastinated by delaying the inevitable real world, deciding to play it safe by getting another degree — this time in the nation’s capital. Did I know myself then? Who I wanted to be? What I wanted to accomplish? I thought I did. In fact, I thought I had many, if not all, the answers. D.C. was a tough place to be on my own, but I quickly learned the back streets and how to survive Beltway traffic. I learned to wear makeup. That was a huge step. First day on the job, my news director told me not to come back until I’d been to the Lancome makeup counter at Nordstrom. I started running amongst the monuments from my red brick Georgetown rental to the top of the Capitol stairs. I’d run one way and take a cab back with a quick Gatorade stop on Pennsylvania Avenue. I thought I was cool, but what did I know? At 23, I had a master’s degree, a new television job, a puppy, and a rental in Coos Bay, Oregon. Where? I learned where that was too. And I had my first real love. He was older, but we balanced each other out and the May-December relationship blossomed. He provided me with romance, career support and stability, and I provided him with youthful endeavors. It was a trade off, and looking back I still have no regrets and regard this period fondly. Living in Coos Bay I discovered another side of myself — the side that enjoys nature. Weekends were spent hiking, exploring monumental sand dunes, local beaches, rivers and waterfalls, claming in minus tides, picking wild blackberries for breakfast and just getting to know my comfort level of aloneness. But then came 25 and a career move to Pennsylvania, the coal belt of the east. The news director who hired me was bumped, and I was left with a brand new boss and no camera man. There were lies and more lies and even more lies. And I gained an insider’s perspective on the “great” career I had chosen. I learned you’re only as good as your last story. And you’ve got to be either a back-stabber or a bitch to make it. Since I was neither, I packed up and mid-way through 26 and moved back to Washington where a career in ghost-writing novels awaited. I soon learned “ghosting” wasn’t my thing, nor was public relations, which I tried for a firm in Bethesda, MD. The new boyfriend wasn’t my thing either. I had fallen in love with my eyes rather than my head. And I learned how the heart can rationalize anything. After September 11, I moved once more — this time to the safety of my California home town. I wanted to make a change, switch careers, forget about mean roommates and ugly breakups. I wanted to grow wiser and gain more control over my own surroundings. I’ve been doing that these last two years, working on myself, trying to polish my rough spots. It takes work everyday, but one day hopefully soon it will all come together and be worth the effort. While religion hasn’t been paramount in my 20s, nonetheless I have taken classes, attended Jewish lectures and even MCed a few synagogue programs. I’ve tried to broaden my interests by volunteering on Jewish social action committees. I see it as a slow but steady evolution reinforcing my Jewish roots. Besides having to actually say I’m 30, I feel no different — well, maybe better. Most of my older friends say the 30s are much better than the 20s and that one doesn’t have to deal with the varying vicissitudes. We’ll see. I know I have a lot to accomplish this decade, starting with a new career in counseling, which I hope I’ll like. I also have more writing to do. I’d like to have one more beautiful, strong romance that will last forever. Physically, I look better than I did when I was 21, and, I’m told, younger than most women of my age. My eyes certainly haven’t developed those awful (I won’t even say the word), nor do I have any forehead wrinkles. My butt is still firm. Breasts are still perky and small. Oh well, can’t change anything there. So all in all, I’m thrilled to be celebrating this milestone year, content to be leaving the 20s and ready to discover the tomorrow. After a decade of uncertainly, trials and errors, do I know myself better? Who I want to be? What I want to accomplish? I think I do and I’m ready for it. So life — bring it on! Dana Greene is an award-winning syndicated columnist based in San Diego. Contact “Single Situations” at dgreene74@aol.com. People in the News
Arts & EntertainmentThe Next Big Thing: Comic Gary Gulman Gary
Band PEABODY — On a mild, snowy day in early January, Peabody native Gary Gulman pulls up to the Starbucks on Route 114 two hours before he has to catch a plane to perform at a comedy club in South Florida. The gig, at the West Palm Beach Improv, was one of over 300 this modest and very funny comic has done this year. The second runner up on the second season of the television special Last Comic Standing this past fall, Gulman was a little disappointed not to win, but being up there to the end was pretty impressive and gave him a great deal of exposure. “Before Last Comic some places wouldn’t return my calls,” said Gulman. Referring to his performance at the Comedy Connection in Boston on December 18, he said, “last year at this time I didn’t sell half as many seats. I’m just fortunate to have some name recognition now.” A resident of Los Angeles since January 2000, he has performed every weekend at clubs around the country since August. Hard pressed to describe his comedy, Gulman says he doesn’t do politics, “nothing mainstream, no airplane jokes, nothing about the Hilton sisters.” He does say that he’s a little neurotic and “obsessed with food.” For example, at the December 18 performance, he did a 5-minute bit on his aunt’s jello, touched on his favorite cookie, the Doublestuff Oreo, explored the potential of a Fig Newton versus the Girl Scout cookie, compared and contrasted Pepsi, Coke and Fanta, and concluded this comedy smorgasboard with a humorous deconstruction of the fruit cup, before segueing into some holiday and family humor. “I wouldn’t be the same comic if I wasn’t Jewish,” he said. The youngest of three brothers, Gulman said he didn’t get a lot of support from his family early on. ‘You’re funny, but you you’re not planning to make a living from this, right,’ Gulman remembers one of his brothers saying to him. An accounting major and football player at Boston College from 1988-92, after graduation Gulman worked as an accountant and performed at bars and clubs around Boston without pay. His first paid gig was at Nicks Comedy Stop in Boston on October 8, 1993, but he only started making a living from his comedic talent in 1999. He soon after retained an agent, was showcased at a comedy festival in Montana, and in October 1999 was on the David Letterman Show with guest host David Brenner. A year later he was on again with Letterman, and then appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. While there’s no substitute for writing and delivering well, and performing all the time, Gulman says the late night and Last Comic appearances have been big breaks for him. In addition to gigs, he has been working on a CD and trying to write some scripts for a TV pilot. He says he wouldn’t be surprised if he got a TV show or a movie, but hopes always to be known “as a comic first and an actor second.” Gulman will perform at the Temple Beth El and Temple Israel fundraiser at Beth El on March 26 at 7 p.m. $30 in advance, $35 at the door. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Children of Tsunami/UNICEF fund. Call 781-599-8005.
Editorial
It’s not often we put an article from another newspaper on our front page. But we think Michael Steinhardt’s piece from the Jerusalem Post is right on the money. Steinhardt is a former Wall Street wunderkind who now devotes himself to Jewish philanthropy. He reminds us of some uncomfortable truths about the American Jewish community: Our numbers are shrinking; many of our children and grandchildren grow up ignorant of their heritage; Our financial priorities are skewed more toward remembering the past than building institutions for the future. It’s time, says Steinhardt, to recognize that efforts to instill Jewish knowledge, consciousness and pride in our young are the key to what we in this community call Jewish continuity. Educators have long known that programs to instill Jewish identity in the young create lifelong Jewish commitment: Jewish day schools, Jewish summer camps, peer trips to Israel for teenagers and young adults, regular synagogue attendance, and home reinforcement from an early age — these are the foundation on which commitment is built. Birthright israel, a partnership of American Jewish groups and the State of Israel, has sent more than 70,000 young people on peer-travel trips to Israel since January 2000. Our own Youth to Israel program has sent 1,000 local youngsters to Israel, with subsidies from the Federation of the North Shore and local philanthropist Bob Lappin, since 1970. A survey partially completed on its alumnae — 203 responses so far — shows 88 percent of Y2I-ers who have married did so within the faith. (Note to former Y2I-ers: If you haven’t filled out a survey yet, contact dcoltin@rilf.org). In the next issue of The Journal, we’ll describe how our community seeks to organize its resources to build a future for Jewish excellence. Meanwhile we urge readers to take seriously what Michael Steinhardt is saying. Our collective future depends on such thinking. Time
to Free Jonathan Pollard If Israel can liberate enemies who sought to destroy it, why not do as much for a friend, who sought, too earnestly, to preserve it? — Mark R. Arnold The Passions of Israel
You can’t walk the streets of Jerusalem, read the Israeli press, talk to relatives, friends and people in cafes without being filled with passions of pity, anger and hope. That is why writing this column from Jerusalem, Israel produces something different from what I might have written from Salem, Massachusetts. The difference is between writing at arms length with detached objectivity or writing while you are in it up to your eye balls. The difference is the passion you discover when reality is close by. In the past week I have met four people who have each lost a soldier-son in the past four years. I also met a father whose daughter was killed in a suicide bombing at a café in Jerusalem. Five people whose separate lives have now found a devastating common denominator. This week, during a visit to the Alyn Hospital in Jerusalem, I saw three children, 15-, 10- and 8-years old, playing in the computer lab. All three had lost both legs and wore temporary devices prior to being fitted with artificial limbs. When I told the doctor in charge how moved I was to see three kids in that condition smiling and having fun, she told me these were three Arab brothers from Gaza. Weeks before, she said, the brothers, their grandfather and their sister had been caught up in an Israeli army operation aimed at several high level terrorists. The three boys lost their legs, the grandfather and sister lost their lives. The doctor explained that these children are still in partial shock and for now appear smiling and happy. But after they leave the hospital and realize what life holds for them, their attitudes will be very different. Arafat’s death, the election of Mahmoud Abbas, the anxious lull in the killings, perhaps signaling a permanent cease fire, statements by both Abbas and Prime Minister Sharon that they believe they can trust each other to work on peace, are hopeful signs that change is in the air. All this stirs my peacenik values, giving me renewed hope that a new era between Palestinians and Israelis may now begin. The pollsters have not yet issued their results but I think that a sizable majority of Israelis have a cautious understated optimism since the meeting between Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians at Sharm el Sheik. Passion for peace is strong, just muted now, fearful of being disappointed once again. But now, as Israel enters a hopeful phase, we see the public reemergence of every society’s worst enemy, political extremists whose message to government officials is: Do as we want or we will kill you. Verbal and written threats have been made against Prime Minister Sharon and others associated with peace efforts and withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank. So, as if we need it here, Israel is challenged by an ultimate democratic dilemma. How far does free speech go until it takes over and turns a democracy into a dictatorship? Or, if somebody threatens to kill you, do you put them in jail first? I know that some will argue that is exactly what Mubarak in Egypt and other Arab leaders do to their political opponents — put them in jail (or kill them). That’s overreacting. Israel dosen’t execute anyone. Last week, Palestinian leader Abbas approved the execution of three Palestinians convicted (in a dubious trial) of collaborating with Israel. Administrative detention, jail for a specified period of time, is likely to be the Israel government’s response. Sad but true, as Israel President Moshe Katsav said last week, “We have to put an end to it [death threats] before it does irreversible damage.” Keep tuned for future developments. Or better yet, come to Israel for two weeks or a month, take a flat or a few rooms in a city, visit and talk with lots of people, and live the passions, problems and hopes of Israel. Your feelings will swing between distress and elation but you won’t be bored — there’s just too many Israelis around.
The Dream of a Common Language
When asked about his connection to the Jewish people, Franz Kafka answered, “What do I have in common with the Jewish people? I hardly have anything in common with myself.” Kafka’s disorientation and neurosis, obviously the source of much personal pain, have always been a bellwether for me. As a rule of thumb, I always try to do the opposite of what Kafka chooses. His Hunger Artist can’t find anything he likes to eat, and so withers down to nothing. Not me. I can’t drop an ounce. Indeed, I find in each food group a magnetism as compelling as a child’s cry to her mother. Speaking of which, when I gave birth to my first child, I took the Kafka challenge. I wanted my daughter to be the complete opposite of that miserably uncomfortable man. I wanted her to feel completely enchanted with the Jewish people, like another pleasing pumpernickel in the ever-beckoning delicatessen of Yiddishkeit. And what, I thought hard, would make a person feel part of the Jewish people? What would an American Jewish child born in the waning decades of the 20th century need to become a robust citizen of this diverse nation? For me, the answer was language. I have always believed that living inside a Jewish head required it to be filled with a language of the Jewish people, and, if it’s not too much to ask, its literature. “What nationality is a man (sic) at his core?” my college history professor used to ask, “It is the same as the language in which he counts his money.” So I decided to prepare my little Tzipora for her Hebrew nationality. I committed to speaking to her entirely in Hebrew. I subsequently decided that every child born into my household would have a Jewish tongue, and thus a Jewish head, a Jewish heart, a Jewish sensibility, a Jewish identity as strong and as tall as the Cedars of Lebanon. Shall I be truthful? That commitment lasted less than a month into my daughter’s life. She hadn’t even learned to smile and I was already worn down by the effort of speaking a foreign language to her round the clock. I slept with my Hebrew dictionary and my baby beside me. I nursed her reading Bialik’s poetry. Several times a day, I would seek out my worn Hebrew grammar book for advice on how to conjugate or pluralize. My first failure as a mother came linguistically when I had to admit that this Hebrew thing was absolutely wearing me out. Though I loved the Jewish people with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my might, I was not a native speaker of any Jewish language. I counted my money in an Anglo-Saxon dialect. Truth be told, it’s probably a good idea my kids didn’t learn their Hebrew from me. I was sitting in a car with my Italian aunt (she speaks only Hebrew and Italian) when she looked me up and down and asked, “You’re not wearing a girdle?” I was crushed. Did I really look that bad? Was I such a mess that I had to be upbraided in public? My Israeli cousin saw the shocked look on my face. Calmly she handed me the seatbelt and said, “I know what you’re thinking. But she meant ‘seat belt.’ That’s just the Hebrew word for seatbelt.” I buckled up, still a bit horrified, reminded of the wrestlers my sons used to emulate. “Don’t try this at home, ladies and gentlemen,” they would caution, “This is a move that should be handled only by professionals.” The Joys of Jewish Guilt
I don’t know about you, but I was born feeling guilty. I think my first words were, ”I’m sorry.” Ever since I can remember, I carried a sack of guilt around like a 16-ton baby blanket. After all these years, it’s kind of cozy to haul around my load of guilt; sometimes it’s tough on the back, but I am a stronger and better person for feeling guilty 99 percent of the time. Perhaps before I kick the bucket, I can feel guilty 24/7 and then I will be able to rest in peace. You may think I’m making this story up, but as a young girl I tripped over a tree trunk and apologized to it. I felt bad for the poor stump when I probably should have been more concerned with what a fool I looked like lying in the middle of the street with my shoelaces untied. I knew I had passed on my legacy of being consumed by guilt to my daughter when her fourth grade teacher told me that Rachel felt personally responsible for both slavery and the dismal work conditions of the girls in the Lowell Mills. Just for the record, I am not talking about the guilt one feels for committing a heinous crime a la O.J. I am speaking of Jewish guilt, that compass that keeps us pointed in the right direction. I’m speaking of the guilt Voltaire references when he says, “Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.” Like all the times you didn’t call your mother when you promised. This crime alone is good reason to walk with your head bowed in shame, guilt boiling in your belly enumerating ways to repent your sinful ways. I notice that women tend to feel guiltier than men. When I run with a good friend of mine, we spend 50 percent of the time apologizing for saying the wrong thing or bumping into each other. I know that when Mitch runs with me, he often leaves me in the dust and doesn’t even know he’s not listening to me. Ooops. I feel guilty about saying that. He’s really a great guy and an awesome running mate. I often wonder what it would feel like to live life guilt-free. Would I soar to the sky like a proud eagle or just sort of ricochet all over the place like a balloon when you let the helium out? I’ll probably never know. It keeps me grounded on a familiar path. As I wind up this article, I am feeling guilty that it should have been longer or maybe shorter, perhaps more funny or a tad more serious.
The ‘Innate Differences’ Flap
In 1873, Edward Clark, a Harvard physician, suggested that young women who engaged in “heavy mental activity” would wreck their reproductive system. “The results are monstrous brains and puny bodies . . . the brain cannot take more than its share without injury to other organs.” What calls this to mind just now, obviously, is the flap over recent comments by Larry Summers, president of Harvard University, regarding women and science. The subject was the underrepresentation of women in tenured positions in science and engineering in America’s top universities. According to the transcript of his comments, Summers offered three tentative hypotheses to explain the phenomenon, of which one was “different availability of aptitude at the high end,” a formulation that suggests that although women might be competent to be average professors of science or research engineers, most lack the aptitude to be among the best in those professions. That suggestion in itself sufficient to set off a firestorm of controversy, lifted the lid on a growing number of simmering resentments that have marked Summers’ presidency. Summers himself put his provocative comments within a provocative context. “It is, after all,” he said, “not the case that the role of women in science is the only example of a group that is significantly underrepresented in an important activity and whose underrepresentation contributes to a shortage of role models for others who are considering being in that group. “To take a set of diverse examples, the data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking . . . ; that white men are very substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association, and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and in agriculture.” Such examples can easily be multiplied, and are usually explained on the grounds of different patterns of socialization and by societal discrimination. To introduce “innate ability” as an explanation is to risk the angry reaction that Summers’ remarks in fact elicited. In the case of women, it is to recall a dismal history that extends in time and in tone well beyond Dr. Clark’s odd (and yes, outrageous) assertion that women are, in effect, required to choose between brain and uterus. Still, there is something puzzling here. Do we, or ought we, expect that in a perfectly integrated and egalitarian society, every significant group in the society – in Summers’ examples, white men, women, Catholics and Jews – will be represented in every sector of the economy in proportion to its numbers in the population? That is not a Utopian vision; it is a nonsensical vision. Plainly, the group is not an arbitrary construct. Groups have distinctive cultures, which means that their members have distinctive values, ambitions and expectations. Might it be that they also have distinctive abilities, whether genetically defined or culturally promoted (or both)? In 1967, two Harvard researchers, Susan Stodolsky and Gerald Lesser, published an extraordinary paper in which they reported that different ethnic groups – Chinese, Puerto Rican, Negro (the term in use back then) and Jewish – had distinctive patterns of learning, and that those patterns remained stable across class lines. While middle class students did better than lower class students, ethnic patterns remained constant. Chinese students were weakest in verbal skills, strongest in spatial conceptualization; the patterns for Jewish students was exactly reversed. Is it, then, a surprise that there are proportionately more Chinese architects than the number of Chinese in the population would predict and more Jewish lawyers than the proportion of Jews in the population? The only problem is that, so far as I am aware, the Stodolsky/Lesser results have never been replicated. The American society is remarkably fluid, the boundaries that separate groups are remarkably permeable, and the “patterns of learning” that in one suggestive study seemed to explain much of the difference we commonly observe are, in fact, highly variable, dependent far more on socialization and on educational opportunity than on “innate” ability. Further evidence of the malleability of learning patterns and, presumably, of achievement patterns as well, can be derived from Israel’s experience. Jews underrepresented in agriculture? Not in a society that honors farming. Jews underrepresented in the military? Not in a society that values military skills. Once, sitting on the lush lawn of a kibbutz with a close friend, we got to talking about our children and their prospects in life. Mine were college-bound, and were going through the usual pre-admission jitters. His were being considered for service in a highly specialized army unit — or, as he put it, with pride and with irony, for acceptance into “the Harvard of warmaking.” And just the other day, he told me how puzzled his granddaughter’s friends were when she rejected the IDF invitation to become a jet fighter pilot. Which is why Larry Summers was almost surely wrong to propose as an explanation for the dearth of tenured women in science and engineering in the top schools an innate difference in “aptitude at the high end,” as wrong as Edward Clark was about women and “heavy mental activity” in 1873.
When Authorities Deny Acts of Terrorism
Anyone following the investigation into the mid-January slaughter of the Armanious family (husband, wife, two young daughters), Copts living in Jersey City, N.J., knows who the presumptive suspects are: Islamists furious at a Christian Egyptian immigrant who dares engage in Internet polemics against Islam and who attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity. The authorities, however, have blinded themselves to the extensive circumstantial evidence, insisting that “no facts at this point” substantiate a religious motive for the murders. Somehow, the prosecutor missed that all four members of this quiet family were savagely executed in the ritualistic Islamist way (multiple knife attacks and near-beheading); that Jersey City has a record of Islamist activism and jihadi violence; and that an Islamist website, http://www.barsomyat.com/, carried multiple threats against Hossam Armanious (“we are going to track you down like a chicken and kill you”). Law enforcement seems more concerned to avoid an anti-Muslim backlash than to find the culprits. This attitude of denial fits an all-too-common pattern. I have previously documented a reluctance in nearby New York City to see as terrorism the 1994 Brooklyn Bridge (“road rage” was the FBI’s preferred description) and the 1997 Empire State Building shootings (“many, many enemies in his mind,” said Rudolph Giuliani). Likewise, the July 2002 LAX murders were initially dismissed as “a work dispute” and the October 2002 rampage of the Beltway snipers went unexplained, leaving the media to ascribe it to such factors as a “stormy [family] relationship.” These instances are part of a yet-larger pattern. •
The 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane by the Islamist El Sayyid A. Nosair
was initially ascribed by the police to “a prescription drug for
or consistent with depression.” Bishop
went unexplained; the family chimed in by blaming the acne drug Accutane. Nor
is this a problem unique to American authorities. Other examples include: I have cited thirteen cases here and provide information on further incidents on my weblog. Why this repeated unease acknowledging Islamist terrorism by the authorities, why the shameful denial? Because terrorism has much greater implications than prescription drugs going awry, road rage, lunatics acting berserk, or freak industrial accidents. Those can be shrugged off. Islamist terrorism, in contrast, requires an analysis of jihadi motives and a focus on Muslims, steps highly unwelcome to authorities. A New Era in the Middle East?
You could almost begin to believe that it is morning in the Middle East. Most obviously, important change is finally visible in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. The death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was imperative, of course, to the lessening of violence. But possibly more crucial was the sheer exhaustion of the Palestinians after four years of futile efforts to terrify Israel into offering greater concessions than it had been prepared to make in peace talks at Camp David. This second intifada was different from previous Arab wars against the Jewish state. In 1948 and the subsequent conflicts, existing nations — Egypt, Jordan, Syria and others — provided troops as well as arms and suffered the deaths and injuries of war. This time, the Palestinians, not proxies, waged the fight almost exclusively. And the Israeli government and army soundly beat them. The combination of actions — targeting terrorist leaders, demolishing the homes of terrorist families, the security barrier, curfews, strict checkpoints and all the rest that drew such condemnation from Europe and the United Nations — finally proved to the Palestinians that Allah had not blessed their uprising and that it could only continue to inflict more pain on them than on Israel. That
realization has opened a door for a duly elected Palestinian Authority
president, Mahmoud Abbas, to try to rein in the terrorists and to develop
a government that is less corrupt and more interested in the well being
of ordinary Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the
Knesset have recognized his actions. They have quickly backed off some
of the most repressive measures, such as destroying Palestinian homes.
The happy by-product of this lessening of violence is to help take the Israeli-Palestinian issues off the table in other Arab countries. Now the Lebanese can afford to think about what their lives would be like without the Syrian military and Hezbollah. Syria could afford to fall in line and talk to Israel about the Golan Heights. Egypt is sending its ambassador back to Tel Aviv. That is all good news. But offsetting it is a rich history of Arab and Muslim myopia. It shows up in the assassination, possibly by Syrian agents, of a leading Lebanese democratizer. It is visible in the continuing carnage in Iraq where Sunni suicide bombers attack Shiite mosques as well as policemen. You can read it in the sermons of the Saudi imams and the Egyptian Holocaust deniers. It is a revulsion against modernity by a culture that is stuck in the rituals of the eighth century — that continues to believe that disputes must be settled by the sword, that Islam is the perfection of religion and that infidels must convert or die. It is a society that claims it is honoring women by making them second-class citizens, that teaches children the Koran instead of physics — that fears the present as much as it does the future. Perhaps liberal democracy will arise in Iraq, but every new bombing suggests otherwise. Maybe the Iranian moderates will prevail, but Teheran’s efforts to build a nuclear arsenal says no. Maybe the small-scale electoral experiments in Egypt and Saudi Arabia are a precursor of an Enlightment like Europe’s, but you wouldn’t want to bet on it. And both America and Israel, while striving to encourage an Arab awakening, must continue to base their policies on the fact that the new era hasn’t quite dawned yet.
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