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Newburyport Swastika Painters Not Charged With Hate Crimes

BRETT M. RHYNE
Jewish Journal Staff

NEWBURYPORT — Despite defacing an elementary school, a church door and 24 houses, storefronts, road signs and cars with at least one spray-painted swastika and other anti-Semitic, racist and sexist epithets, three Newburyport youths will not be charged by the city with committing hate crimes.

Instead, Jeremy Thaxter, 18, Graham Hill-Whilton, 17, and a male juvenile, about whom Newburyport police would provide no further information, have been charged with 24 counts of wantonly injuring real or personal property and two counts of willfully or wantonly injuring a church or school, according to Newburyport Police Department spokesman Lt. Robert Gagnon.

The first count is a misdemeanor. The second is a felony only if the damages are greater than $5,000. The district attorney decides whether to measure the damages cumulatively or singly for each of the two counts.

Early Sunday morning, Dec. 15, police arrested the juvenile in the act of defacing a convenience store in downtown Newburyport. Thaxter and Hill-Whilton, Gagnon said, “are being called into court following the results of the investigation.” He did not know when the suspects, all Newburyport residents, would be arraigned.

Gagnon would not comment on the content of the graffiti except to call it “a senseless act of destruction.”
But Newburyport Mayor Alan Lavender said, “I believe swastikas and anti-black things were written. I don’t know for a fact.” He stressed that he did not see the graffiti first hand but was relying on the reports of others.

The youths vandalized two communal structures: the door of the United People’s Methodist Church and the school yard fence and a mural at Brown Elementary School.

The wooden fence still bears the marks where attempts were made to sand off a two-foot square swastika and a now mostly obscured two-word phrase. Eleven of 13 panels of the mural, created by last year’s graduating class, were defaced. All the panels have been removed. Additionally, a source associated with the School Department claims the graffiti on the panels has been obscured as well.

It is unclear who sanded the fence or removed the panels and obscured the graffiti on them.

School Superintendent Mary Murray did not return Jewish Journal telephone calls. Gagnon said the police did not remove them. Mayor Lavender said he was unaware the panels had been both removed and painted over.

“I wasn’t consulted until after the graffiti on the fence had been obliterated,” Lavender said. He said town police had taken pictures of the posters, but he had not seen them because they were evidence in the ongoing investigation.

“In my opinion, this kind of graffiti should be removed as soon as possible,” he said. “Otherwise, it leads to copycat crimes.”

School Committee member Bruce Menin, whose family lives three blocks from the Brown School and whose daughter attends first grade there, was concerned by the decision not to charge the three with perpetrating hate crimes.

“Everybody is reticent to call it a hate crime,” Menin said. “My fear is that Newburyport is in a different moral place than the community should be, that hate crimes are considered to be less than utterly unacceptable.

“There always seems to be a way to rationalize these things,” he said. “This has happened half a dozen times in the last three or four years. This town looks very different to me than it did six months ago.”

A year ago, the white supremacist group Northern Alliance distributed literature here; last spring, the National Alliance, another racist group, also distributed anti-Semitic and anti-African-American literature. Two years ago, Nock Middle School was beset by a rash of anti-Semitic graffiti in the girls’ and boys’ locker rooms and between the school’s windows.

Lt. Gagnon said that “because we haven’t had too many cases of hate crimes” in Newburyport, investigating officer, Inspector Brian Brunault, consulted with Robert Bender of the District Attorney’s office for the Eastern District on how to charge Thaxter, Hill-Whilton and the juvenile. Bender counseled the police that the vandalism did not qualify as a hate crime because “an individual or organization was not targeted,” according to Gagnon.

Bender did not see any evidence nor did he visit Newburyport to make his determination. “I had it all described to me,” he told The Journal. “It didn’t violate any civil rights provisions. Those provisions require that the offender intends to intimidate. Interviews with the suspects didn’t bear out any intent to intimidate.”

“Although they used symbols some might find offensive,” Gagnon said, “they were not directed at any individual or organization. A symbol is a symbol — there was no rhyme or reason to it. There was no indication — even by the vandals themselves — that anyone was targeted individually or collectively.”

“Leaving a symbol in a public place does not indicate a civil rights violation,” Bender said. “There needs to be evidence of a threat. That threat can be against the public or a group as well as an individual. There were certainly victims here, but not of a threat.”

Bender was careful to distinguish hate crimes from civil rights violations. He said hate crimes as such “are not on the books of the Commonwealth. ‘Hate crime’ describes a behavior that is useful for statistical purposes.” He said certain bias or hate indicators are used by police and other reporting organizations to report statistics. A civil rights violation requires intent, “which was not present in this case,” he said.

“I think it meets the statutory definition of a hate crime,” said School Committeeman Menin. He argued a victim was in fact targeted: Brown School Principal Michael Jacobson. “He’s the only Jewish principal in Newburyport. The week before, he had his picture in the paper talking to kids about Chanukah.” Jacobson annually teaches students about the history and meaning of the Jewish holiday.

Lt. Gagnon denied Jacobson was targeted. “We have no information which would lead us to believe that is the case,” he said.

Jacobson was unavailable for comment. The Newburyport Daily News of Wednesday, Dec. 18 described Jacobson as briefly thinking the crime was in response to his publicized Chanukah lesson, but then reconsidering and coming to the conclusion that the entire neighborhood was targeted, not just his school.

According to Anti-Defamation League-New England (ADL) Regional Director Robert Leikind, “Generally applied legal standards define a hate crime as when a victim is singled out because of their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation…” Leikind, a former Eastern District prosecutor, as is Bender, said hate crime statutes “don’t punish thought, they punish the act of singling out a person as a member of a group.”

In this case, Leikind said, “The perpetrators may be doing this to target individuals. These acts are certainly hateful and criminal. Whether or not they are hate crimes is a legal question. There is probably enough evidence to charge them with a hate crime. There could also be significant reasons why this is inadvisable — it may not be a hate crime.”

Leikind said that based on the evidence released by police so far, “a prima facie case could be made for this being a hate crime.” He described a prima facie case as, “If you assume all the evidence was good and accurate, you could probably get a conviction.”

For his part, Menin’s concerns stemmed from the lack of official response to the vandalism from Newburyport’s mayor, school or police departments. “I’m still waiting for a community response,” he said.

Menin claims that by the time of the School Committee meeting of Monday, Dec. 16, the crimes had not been noted in either the police log or the superintendent’s report. When Menin pressed Mayor Lavender and Superintendent Murray on the issue, both said they were advised by Town Marshal [Police Chief] Thomas Howard not to comment because the matter was still under investigation.

Howard later contradicted this interpretation of events. “There was a misunderstanding of what was said,” Howard claims. “I told them the Police Department would wait on their comments until the investigation was over.”
“In retrospect, that was a mistake,” Lavender said. “With these kinds of things, the sooner people speak out against it, the better.”

“The Mayor and the Superintendent have excellent records in other situations,” noted the ADL’s Leikind. “It’s critical that community and political leaders speak out against acts which are far beyond the pale of acceptability.”
Newburyport is among 54 communities in Massachusetts that bear the designation, “No Place for Hate.”

“No Place for Hate” is a community based tolerance and diversity education program created by the ADL.
Deborah Andrews, a member of Newburyport’s No Place for Hate Committee, said she did not think the vandalism was solely anti-Semitic.

“There were not only anti-Semitic signs,” she said, “there was a multitude of signs. There was definitely an anti-Semitic component, but there were anti-Christian components as well.”

“This was just three kids with too much time on their hands,” Andrews said, “who know what causes controversy in our community.”

When asked if she thought the acts qualified as hate crimes, Andrews said, “That’s not for me to say. They knew that they used hate words. They defaced the artwork of fourth graders. That’s not a love crime.”

“City officials have no idea what it’s like,” Menin said, “to be Jewish and have your seven year old daughter go to school and see swastikas on the fence in her school yard.”

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Solving the Puzzle of Children's Literacy

BRETT M. RHYNE
Jewish Journal Staff

MARBLEHEAD — As a speech therapist and kindergarten teacher working together, Linda Arst and Meryl Sevinor were frustrated by the dearth of materials available to parents who want to give their kids a leg up learning literacy at home.

So they created their own.

Arst and Sevinor founded Purple Pebble Games three years ago, and have since created three skill based language literacy games and one math literacy game. Last year, they distributed 50,000 copies of their Connecticut-made games throughout 26 states nationally.

“We wanted to develop games to support in-school activities,” says Sevinor, for 25 years a kindergarten teacher, currently at Marblehead’s Eveleth School.

“Our pre-reading games help children to become competent readers at an early age,” says Arst, a speech therapist who worked for ten years in the Marblehead school system, where she met Sevinor. “Problems with literacy affect children from all socioeconomic backgrounds.”

Having known each other for 21 years, the duo understand and have shared the difficulties of parenting. “We’re giving parents something fun and educational to do with their kids,” says Sevinor. “We’re encouraging that nesting instinct, enabling parents to spend quality time with their kids.”

“Combining learning and fun is so important,” says Arst. “For children to be competent learners, they need for it to be fun. Our games utilize a multi-sensory approach: auditory, visual and tactile. This appeals to different learning styles.”

All three Purple Pebble literacy games employ a jigsaw puzzle approach, where children fit pieces together according to sound, image and sequence. The games are self-correcting — the pieces fit together in only one way, the correct way — and so children can play alone or with others. Geared for preschoolers, ages 3-7, the games are tiered according to stages of literacy development:

• Soundtooning develops pre-reading skills that support phonics and reading: by matching two pictures on separate puzzle pieces, children learn the sounds of words. For example, basket and ball pieces, when fitted together and flipped over, complete a picture of a basketball.

• Chime with Rhyme promotes rhyming skills that contribute to early reading and spelling: by fitting together three rhyming images, children learn to distinguish sounds. For example, cat + bat + hat.

• E-Z as ABC develops letter identification, alphabet sequencing and sound matching skills that are critical for reading: here, children can fit together images that, when flipped, make words starting with each letter of the alphabet, or they can put together a complete alphabet with illustrative pictures.

Purple Pebble’s newest offering is Numbers Count, another jigsaw puzzle-employing game that promotes number sense, recognition and sequencing skills, as well as math concepts like greater than and less than.

“With all our games,” says Sevinor, “we started with a skill we wanted to encourage in children and developed a game around it.”

“As educators,” says Arst, “we always ask, Why do an activity? What is the learning goal?”

The $14.95 games are available locally at the Marblehead Toy Shop, the Learning Tree in Danvers and the Salem Children’s Museum and nationally through direct-to-schools educational catalogues and Mindwear Magazine, as well as at www.purplepebblegames.com.

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National News
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International News

Targeted Killings Debated Following Deadly West Bank Yeshiva Attack

NAOMI SEGAL

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is vowing to step up targeted killings of suspected Palestinian terrorists.

He made the comment following a terror attack on the night of December 27 at a West Bank yeshiva, in which four students were killed and some 10 others wounded.

Reflecting the odd vagaries of Middle East politics, his vow also came as Israeli and Palestinian officials began reviewing the latest draft of a U.S. “road map” for achieving peace in the region.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting two days later, Sharon said that he and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz had agreed to strike at terrorists, those who help them and those who send them.

Also speaking at the meeting, Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein criticized the targeted assassinations policy, saying it must only be used as a last resort when all other attempts to arrest wanted Palestinians have failed.

Israel’s practice of targeted killings is not new, but Sharon’s statements again threw a spotlight on the controversial policy.

In last Friday’s attack, two Palestinian gunmen dressed in Israeli army uniforms and armed with rifles and hand grenades infiltrated the settlement of Otniel south of Hebron.

They entered the yeshiva through the kitchen, firing on students and guests who had gathered for Shabbat dinner.

One of the students on kitchen duty managed to lock the door leading from the kitchen to the dining room, preventing the terrorists from entering the dining room.

All four of the students who were in the kitchen were killed.

One gunman was killed in a half-hour shootout with Israeli troops. The second terrorist fled but was found later and killed by Israeli soldiers.

On Dec. 29, the four Israelis killed in the attack were buried. They were identified as Pvt. Yehuda Bamberger, 20, of Karnei Shomron; Zvi Zieman, 18, of Re’ut; Gavriel Hoter, 17, from Alonei Habashan; and Staff Sgt. Noam Apter, 23, of Shilo.

Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it came in retaliation for the slaying a day earlier of one of its leaders in the Jenin area.

In another development, an Israeli undercover unit arrested three members of Islamic Jihad near Hebron, Army Radio reported.

Mofaz said that soldiers have arrested more than 1,200 Palestinians in the past two months in what he described as an unprecedented campaign against suspected terrorists.

On the same day as the Yeshiva killings, the leader of Hamas called for additional attacks against Israel.

During a rally of 30,000 supporters in Gaza City, Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin said discussions between Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement about temporarily suspending attacks on Israeli civilians will not prove fruitful.

“The march of martyrs will move forward,” Yassin said. Activists at the rally blew up a model of an Israeli tank and burned US, British and Israeli flags.

Israel blamed Arafat for the Otniel attack, saying the Palestinian Authority has failed to clamp down on terror.

A Palestinian official said Israel’s policies, including the targeted killings, were to blame for the ongoing attacks.

Meanwhile, Israeli and Palestinian officials began reviewing the latest draft of an international diplomatic initiative aimed at ending more than two years of violence.

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Features

Yes, Virginia, There Really Are Ethical Businesses (and Owners)

DEBORAH WILLWERTH
Special to the Jewish Journal

Last summer, dire news from the world of business was a daily occurrence. Employees from corporations such as Enron, WorldCom and Tyco, testified to the illegal practices they had witnessed.

Many workers saw their retirement plans decimated. CEOs were indicted. The bottom line had been pursued at the expense of employee loyalty and customer satisfaction. Business, instead of being the vehicle for America’s progress, became the symbol of its economic and moral downfall.

It was an atmosphere in which worry, suspicion and fear seemed pervasive on the part of both consumers and business owners. What must business owners do to survive and thrive? And if the business owner is Jewish, are Jewish ethics and values important in business decisions?

Four local business owners were interviewed and asked to speak about conducting business Jewishly.

Marc Cooper: “Giving Back to the Community”

Beverly resident Marc Cooper started his company, The Fiber Resource Group, in 1996, keeping one policy preeminent in his mind: Everything comes back.

“I was taught that my actions — both positive and negative — have consequences both positive and negative. More importantly, I have to live with those consequences. Therefore, I always strive to do the right thing by the people I am dealing with. If I don’t, I know that I, my employees, and my customers will suffer.”

Cooper says that all too often people are influenced by what he calls the “greed factor” which seems to justify any type of behavior, as long as the business makes a profit. You have to resist that impulse and do the right thing,” he says. Along with a strong ethical code, Cooper believes it is imperative to give back to the community, both in terms of money and volunteerism.

“I don’t look at [giving back] as a responsibility. It was always something I was expected to do when I was able.”

Cooper feels that we have within ourselves the capacity to give more. “I have a friend who told me ‘I have never met a person who has given away so much money that it’s changed their lives for the worse.’” In other words, giving away money doesn’t make one poorer; on the contrary, Cooper says, “You find that those who give the most, get the most back.” More to the point, Cooper emphasizes, “You don’t give in order to get something back; it just happens that way.”

Cooper credits Jewish values and a strong work ethic to his success. “There is a strong survival value in the Jewish people. Jewish people, in general, either own or run a high percentage of businesses. We have terrific role models to emulate. It all comes down to the basic Jewish values I was brought up with. In the end, it doesn’t matter how much you have. If you’ve acquired your wealth by treating people unethically or if you don’t give back, it makes what you have meaningless.”

Rob Edelstein: “You only have one reputation”

“My grandfather was very religious in the Orthodox tradition. He was a founding member of Temple B’nai Abraham [in Beverly], so the temple has always been important to our family.”

During the High Holidays, says Edelstein, his father instilled in his children the notion of repenting for one’s sins and striving to improve your life.

“We were expected to always try to do the right thing. We were told, ‘You have only one reputation, and, for good or bad, it will follow you for the rest of your life.’”

Looking back, Edelstein remembers thinking that he could get away with a lot of things, “except for the fact that I knew God is watching. For that reason, I can’t take the easy route in any anything I do in my personal or business life.” He and his brother Steven are owners and partners in their business, Reliant Mortgage Company.

“In my business, I’ve seen a lot of mortgage bank fraud. I’ve seen people go to jail, and that really scares you. Like I said, I know that God is watching, so I have to do the right thing and keep my reputation intact.”

Reliant Mortgage Company employs approximately 140 people. “I have an obligation to treat my employees as fairly and righteously as I do my customers,” he says. Edelstein credits his employees with making him a better listener and to “get all the facts and listen to all sides before making any decisions.

“When it’s all said and done, if I’ve done something wrong, or if I’ve treated somebody shabbily, I can’t sleep at night. I just need to know that, at the end of the day, I did things right and for the right reasons, not just to further my career or personal life. It’s the way I was brought up, and how I’ll raise my children.”

Mark Jaffe: “Balancing Act”

“In my company [Friend Lumber Company], we have three goals: make sure that our customers’ needs are met, that our employees are treated fairly, and that we make a profit. Success is a constant balancing act involving these goals.”

Jaffe cites a long tradition of Jewish business people making sure that customers and employees are treated fairly. That tradition has been a model for Jaffe’s success. For his employees, Jaffe set up a profit-sharing plan.

“I can’t attribute my success only to my efforts,” he says. “My employees’ motivation plays a big part in our achievement, so it’s only right they should share in that success.”

Jaffe considers such measures a “return on his investment.” “When business works as it’s supposed to, then it’s a ‘win-win’ situation for all concerned.”

Jaffe’s grandfather started Friend Lumber Company with a partner in 1946, and the Jaffe family took over in 1956. Over the years, Jaffe worked both full- and part-time and has owned the company since 1992. With 100 employees, Jaffe says he thinks a lot about the tradition of Jewish business owners and about the values he was taught by his father and grandfather.

“What I do today is a logical extension of what I was taught and what I learned.”

He says that each year he and his employees try to improve on each of these three goals.

“I have a great friend involved in a six-generation family business. His mantra is, ‘You have to keep changing to remain the same.’ You have to change or update your methods to keep up with the times,” Jaffe says. “But the core values, those never change. If you lose sight of your values and of your traditions, you’re lost.”

Peter Samiljan: “Let Your Actions Speak for You”

Peter, Maria, and Alan Samiljan have owned Photographics since the 1980s. But, says Peter, the business had its genesis with his grandfather. “My grandfather had a store in Marblehead, and as a hobby, began renting movies to organizations like the local Elks Club.”
After World War II, Samiljan’s father and brother founded the Massachusetts Camera Center in Lynn.

Peter credits his parents for instilling in him a strong work ethic. “As a young kid, I’m sure I was not consciously aware of the dignity and respect with which my father and grandfather treated employees and customers, but it sure rubbed off.”

The philosophy at Photographics is “You don’t shove goods down [customers’] throats.”

“We work with customers to make sure they get what they both need and want. We provide a service and work diligently to make sure that our customers are satisfied. We work constantly with our staff and emphasize that no job is too menial and that a small gesture, such as a smile, can change a person’s day for the better.”

Samiljan says that he encourages his employees to improve themselves. “We don’t hold people back. We love to have employees stay with us, but if they outgrow us or want something else, that’s fine, too. We were taught, and we believe, that you bring people up; you don’t hold them down.”

In addition to the work ethic, the Samiljan children were taught and shown the necessity of giving back to the community. “My dad worked very hard in his business, but he worked equally hard for the community. He was very involved in organizations such as the JCC and the Lynn Merchants Association.

“The important thing I remember, though, is that he never talked about what he did or how much he did. He just rolled up his sleeves and said, ‘Let’s do it.’ He didn’t do anything for the accolades but out of a sense that it was an honor and a privilege to be involved.” In addition to serving on boards or committees at their respective temples or the JCC, other community projects for the Samiljans include distributing recycled cameras to a local fourth grade, developing the resultant photos, and displaying the photos in the store.

“We also collect food for local food pantries or supply free rental coupons for school, church, or temple auctions. It’s something that we love to do, and we are fortunate enough to be able to do it. That’s our legacy from our parents. They never preached; they just did. They weren’t judgmental; they just had faith in us that we would pick it up. It was a strong example to follow.”

Maimonides said, “One should never conduct his affairs with smooth talk and flattery. Nor may one say one thing and mean another.”
For these men, the road to success is not a one-way street leading only to them. Their actions and decisions affect others’ lives.

Eventually, inevitably, the consequences of these actions — for better or worse — come back to them. And while they gladly celebrate and share their successes with others, they are willing to acknowledge and accept the mistakes they make and learn from them.

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Arts & Entertainment

Do Films Build Jewish Identity?

JOE BERKOFSKY

NEW YORK (JTA) — One recent Sunday, 1,200 people at the vintage Coolidge Corner Cinema in Brookline, Mass., nibbled Jewish-flavored barbecued wings.

Film screenings sandwiched around the chicken, coleslaw and cornbread included “Shalom, Y’all,” and “Kinky Friedman: Proud to be an A****** From El Paso.”

Those two documentaries about Jews and the South were among dozens of offerings at the 13th annual Boston Jewish Film Festival in November.

Though not exactly glatt kosher, the films — and meat — were “a fun way to do something more” at the festival, Executive Director Sara Rubin says.

Perhaps much more, when it comes to filling Jews’ appetite for greater identity, according to a new report by the Jewish Outreach Institute in New York.

The study, “Can Watching a Movie Lead to Greater Jewish Affiliation?” insists that the burgeoning Jewish film festival scene holds not only big box-office potential but the possibility of moving unaffiliated Jews “along the continuum of Jewish involvement.”

The institute examined 46 festivals. One-quarter of them are independently run, while the others have some kind of sponsorship Jewish institutions or organizations, such as Jewish community centers or federations.

“Film festivals serve as an entryway into the Jewish community,” institute spokesman Paul Golin says.

For no Jewish obligation or commitment stricter than the price of admission — and the report urges discounts — any Jew can explore new Jewish worlds in the anonymity of a darkened movie theater.

Hannah Greenstein, the Jewish Outreach Institute’s program officer and co-author of the film festival report, says festivals should view their audiences the way advertisers would target buyers.

“Jewish film festivals must have an outreach goal, they must seek out marketing opportunities to the unaffiliated or the disengaged,” she says.

Those opportunities are booming.

The pioneering Jewish film fest, launched in 1980 in San Francisco, has spawned more than 60 similar events annually in the United States, from Fairbanks to Philadelphia. Another half dozen are held in Canada, and about two dozen globally, from London to Hong Kong to Sao Paulo, Brazil.

In one sure sign that the festivals have arrived, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture sponsors an annual Jewish Film Festival conference. The third such conference, set for San Diego this February, will explore issues such as curating films about Israel in the Diaspora.

The foundation also receives up to 70 applicants each year for the $150,000 it awards annually for Jewish documentary film making.
Jewish “film festivals are one signal of a Jewish renaissance” culturally, says Richard Siegel, the foundation’s executive director. “They’re multiplying, so clearly they’re hitting a responsive chord.”

The box office is heating up too, opening the doors to even wider Jewish involvement, the report says.

San Francisco has grown into the biggest event, attracting 34,700 people watching nearly 50 films in 2002. Toronto is next with some 15,000 people seeing over 60 films, while Boston drew a record 13,000 people this year, up 18 percent from the previous year.

Among the larger festivals, Boston has grown from 10 films at its inception to this year’s edition, which featured 43 films from 14 countries and a $500,000 budget.

The Boston film festival also hosts Jewish films throughout the rest of the year that attract some 10,000 viewers.

Officially, the Boston festival aims to showcase the best contemporary films from around the world dealing with Jewish themes. But Rubin says the festival also “pushes the envelope on what is Jewish” and hopes to spark debate about Jewish themes.

“The festival is a comfortable place to be uncomfortable about your Jewishness,” she says.

This year’s barbecue, at a hip art house, echoed the kind of nontraditional twist that the Jewish Outreach Institute applauds as a creative way to promote Jewish interest.

But Gail Quets, the institute’s director of research and co-author of the study, says anyone expecting people to walk out of such events with a new Jewish identity is kidding himself.

“Outreach is a sequence of activities. People don’t see a Jewish film and run out and join a synagogue,” she says.

The institute’s report urges fests to program “next steps” to greater Jewish activity. Ideas include information tables, panels of experts around film topics or even crossover events to other communities featured in some of the films.

Synagogue affiliation or ties to organized Jewry might come later. But Siegel says traditional notions of Jewish affiliation — such as synagogue membership or federation donations — must be expanded as well.

Jewish film-going is “not affiliation, it’s participation in an active and meaningful way,” he says. “Why should a synagogue dues payer who attends three times a year be considered more engaged than an active participant who debates films at a festival?”

What’s more, the film-going experience — a collective act that is experienced individually — is “essentially what the prayer experience is,” he says.

If Jewish film festivals are becoming the spiritual realm of the barely initiated, then film topics run a gamut almost as wide as the great Jewish texts.

From gay Chasidic Jews (“Trembling Before G-d”) to the toxic effects of vinyl siding on Jewish suburbia (“Blue Vinyl“) to Tel Aviv 20-somethings (“Giraffes”), Jewish film making is blossoming, in part to meet the demands of the festival scene.

In San Francisco, for example, festival officials screen 240 films a year, selecting about 50 for the annual event, Executive Director Janis Plotkin says.

In Boston, Rubin says festival officials screened 450 films before picking this year’s selections.

But Sharon Pucker Rivo, executive director of the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University and an associate professor of Jewish film, sees a downside to the Jewish film explosion.

The center, which with more than 200 titles is the world’s largest distributor of Jewish film and video, represents 108 filmmakers seeking distribution through the Jewish festivals.

Whether such festivals can raise Jewish consciousness remains an “amorphous” equation, says Pucker Rivo, who doubts that 40 good Jewish films are produced each year.

Jewish film festivals often show films “that didn’t make it commercially: Either they’re really lousy films or they’re inaccurate, historically,” she says. “But the imprimatur of a film festival gives it legitimacy.”

Just what makes a good Jewish film remains a matter of dispute: Plotkin, for instance, gave a thumbs down to the film “Schmelvis: Searching for the King’s Jewish Roots,” while Toronto’s 10th annual festival hosted the film’s world premiere.

Quality aside, Pucker Rivo also remains skeptical about the Jewish film festival phenomenon. Today’s festivals, she says, are the successors to yesterday’s film series.”

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Singles

Mystery Date

BOSTON — M.D. here, answering the eternal question: What do Jewish singles do on Christmas Eve? Why, go to JConnection & North Shore Jewish Singles’ big to-do at Fire & Ice, of course. MD estimates there’s 300 eligibles here, with about 40 from the North Shore.

It’s a really lovely event. The pick-your-own-ingredients stir fry, brought to your table with tortillas, is delish, and the desserts are totally outrageous. There’s a lot of dancing, schmoozing and business cards flying around, but this party has its share of wallflowers, too. The DJ is spinning plenty of disco classics for this baby boomer crowd, but he’s a little heavy on the hip hop and rap and a little light on the salsa and swing for MD’s taste.

Three guys give MD their business cards. The first is a good dancer but a little too short for yours truly. The second just moved into the area; he’s a nice man, but a little weird. The third is a possibility, but he seems pretty busy. MD won’t call him — she’s not that kind of girl.

Overall, MD takes her cue from Martha Stewart and rates this JConnection/ NSJS event “a good thing” — MD likes to dance, she sees a lot of old friends and there’s plenty of parking downtown, a detail that, for this commuter, makes the evening.
—MD

Mystery Date will next appear at Jewish-8MinuteDating at the WonderBar in Allston, Mass. I’ll see you there — will you see me?

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Keshet Quick Dates

Deana Bomhof and Shanna Halpern inspired 90 participants
and 15 volunteers with their story at Keshet’s 2nd annual
GLBT Quick Dates fundraiser. The happy couple met at
last year’s event. They recently bought a house together.

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Editorial

Our Resolutions for 2003

We can hope and pray for peace in 2003. But at the risk of appearing cynical, we don’t expect it will do much good. Frankly, things aren’t going very well for this old tired world of ours.

But there are some things closer to home that we can hope for, things that have a prayer of being realized. New Year’s resolutions may not be a Jewish tradition, but this seems like as good a time as any to make some. Herewith, Ten Jewish Journal Resolutions for 2003.

1. We want to raise enough money to keep this paper going — and growing.

2. We want to expand our coverage to some neighboring communities where Jewish activities now go largely unreported.

3. We want to chronicle more of the life-cycle events of our readers — to get more ordinary people into our pages. This includes their simchas — births, promotions, graduations, engagements, weddings. And also deaths. Making good on that pledge, beginning next issue, we will provide the option of running pictures and articles about the deceased as an alternative to the simple death notices that now appear on our obituary page.

4. We want to conduct a reader survey to find out more about you: your evolving interests and needs, likes and dislikes, your life styles and concerns.

5. We want to get out of the office more and into the community — especially the northern reaches of the community, in Northern Essex County.

6. We want to compete more aggressively with other publications for stories — and win a few awards for our efforts. We want to be the source you turn to, and trust, for Jewish news, from the community and beyond the community.

7. We want to launch a monthly Kids Page, a page that is both fun and educational, for Jewish youngsters ages 6 to 14.

8. We want to build a stronger, more cohesive Jewish community by helping to bring agencies together and encourage a new generation of Jewish communal leadership.

9. We want to provide ideas and suggestions for people who want to lead more Jewishly meaningful lives and connect with others who are.

10. Finally, we want to turn out a lively, newsy, thought-provoking, responsible, independent, literate, interesting read 26 times a year — a paper you can be proud of, and can’t put down, because it has so many articles you want to think about, talk about, and pass on.

That’s our agenda for the new year. There’s even a role for you, several actually:

• Send us your news, your ideas for stories, and your feedback on how we’re doing.

• Send us your dollars. Our needs are staggering — from a new phone system, office furniture and filing cabinets — to subsidies for feature pages such as Arts & Entertainment, the Kids Page, Business Page, Seniors, Jewish History, Interfaith Activities, and news about Israel and the Diaspora.

• Invite us to talk to a group you belong to. We’d be delighted to meet you and your friends, talk about our plans for The Journal, and learn of your suggestions.

Meanwhile, a very happy Year 2003 to you and your loved ones from all of us at
The Journal.

MARK ARNOLD
Jewish Journal Editor/Publisher

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Local Columnists

Be Careful What Club You Join

 I belong to a club that’s so exclusive people are almost dying to join it.

You never heard of my club? Fact is, I don’t want you to join it, and I’m offering this column so that maybe you won’t have to.

Current members are men and women who have had three separate CABGs (coronary artery bypass grafting) surgeries. Usually pronounced “cabbage,” it is the most commonly performed “open heart” operation in the United States. It bypasses artery blockages with the patient’s own arteries or veins.
Most surgeons won’t do a fourth procedure. As for me, three is more than enough.

At about the time of my first surgery, in the late 1970s, Dr. Dean Ornish was a young physician in cardiology training who began pondering the question of the possibility of actually reducing the amount and size of fatty substances in human coronary arteries.

The Ornish research — documented later in his books and articles in leading medical journals — showed that a healthy and effective alternative to surgery and high-powered medication did exist.

With this in mind, plus knowing I had no future choices, I bought a cowboy hat and headed out to Houston, Texas, in November to a 3-day Dr. Dean Ornish Retreat. (There are many such seminars all over the country, often co-sponsored by a hospital.)

A short seminar is a good introduction. There are other options. Some hospitals do a one-year program. Highmark Blue Cross in Pennsylvania pays a member’s bill for the Ornish program, having concluded that it is better to spend $7,000.00 for preventive medicine than $30,000 to $60,000 for a CABG.

Participants in my retreat were diverse and eager to learn a new way of living. There were 27 of them, men and women from a range of ages, occupational, educational and geographic backgrounds, ethnic and racial characteristics.

One common factor helped us to bond quickly: We all wanted to live better, hopefully longer, and we all were facing — not in 20 years, but very soon — surgery or other unhappy treatment options. Our group, for the most part, was a lot of fun. We found we could laugh at our past foibles and summon up the courage to make a future commitment.

One participant was himself a cardiac surgeon who had performed hundreds of bypass surgeries. Now about 50 years old and faced with getting on the table rather than working beside it, he opted to try Dr. Ornish rather than a fellow surgeon. I was impressed.

The Ornish program has four parts: a low-fat vegetarian diet; regular serious exercise of at least three hours a week, stress management with yoga or meditation, and group support.

The Ornish organization, Life Style Advantage, claims that 90 percent of those doing the one-year program are happily and healthily continuing the program five years later. In fact, one of the most vigorous people at my seminar was a man named Werner, who, along with his wife, attended the first Ornish program 20 years ago. He has gone from a situation of “pain, pain, pain,” to one of hiking four to six hours a day. Werner and his wife are the best looking, fittest, 90-year-olds I have ever met.
Psychology professor David Watson, asks in his book, Self-Directed Behavior, “Before making a major lifestyle change you have to ask yourself ‘Is it really worth it to me?’”

What a question! I’ve got too many more places to go, books to read, family and friends to love and enjoy, and three grandchildren. I want to be around to learn how they turn out.

“Is it really worth it to me?” Please pass the orange juice. I am going to jog to my group support meeting where we will be doing 15 minutes of yoga. So, it took me 67 years to get the message. I got it.

Thank you, Dr. Ornish!”

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The Wick and the Flame

The darkness of winter unfurls gloomy dreams. Days after solstice, in the grey brevity of day, I fail to recall life’s purpose, its sweet enticements, even a reason for awakening. How can I even fuel my car without lining the pockets of Arab potentates? What can I do about America’s relentless march toward war? Will Israel survive?

I am alone in the frozen tundra of my mind and the Messiah, if he is to come at all, will land first in a more temperate climate.

“This is why people take vacations,” Steve tells me. He tosses me a bag and commands me to pack. “After a few days in New York City, you’ll be refreshed.”

Depressed, refreshed… they sound so much alike. Approaching Christmas, the world seems about to stop. “Steve, am I color blind or is it completely, unremittingly, grey outside?”

Luckily, I appear to be the only one in my family so deeply and adversely affected by darkness. Alex has a list of bookstores and jazz clubs he wants to visit. Fran has a list of Kosher restaurants she wants to try. Yoni wants to go to the Museum of Natural History. And Zoe would be content just to stay home and visit Build-a-Bear, the place in the mall where you get to create and dress your own teddy bear.

Steve is his usual sunny self, looking forward to seeing his niece and nephews, who will join us for a few days of R&R. Despite the darkness and the cold, my upbeat husband is undaunted. “Look,” he observes, as we merge onto the highway, “The kids aren’t fighting.” Perhaps I will be persuaded to enjoy myself.

Everywhere I look on this Christmas Eve, there are bright lights and cars filled with colorfully wrapped gifts. Gas station attendants greet us with a “Merry Christmas.” Even surly toll-takers present a pleasant face. Though not a part of the festivities, we are beneficiaries of the mood. Literally, we are in a tunnel, and I see the light, albeit halogen, shining at the end.

And then — is this a metaphor for my mood? — we get a flat tire. We pull over just past the Sturbridge exit and get out to see a mutilated, punctuated, black-walled catastrophe. The tire is clearly deflated, as am I, and as the AAA guy tells us, it would be unwise to travel any distance on the “little donut” the manufacturer gave us as a spare.

Now the car erupts in confusion with everyone voicing an opinion as to what we should do. Go on? Return home? Drive 150 miles on the donut? It is clear we cannot get a new tire until after Christmas.

Though the kids are crushed, we resolve to return home. Their mood plummets; darkness and cold replace hope and anticipation. But nothing moves me more than my children’s sadness. Suddenly, instead of a seasonally afflicted wimp, I am Superman bursting out of the phone booth with a city to save.

“OK, guys,” I tell them. “Let me tell you the story that guides my life.” And I begin to share my favorite Chasidic story, about the little boy, the son of a misnagid (hyper-rationalist Jew) who wanted to see the Chasidic rebbe in another town. After noodgying his father enough, the boy persuades him to hitch up the horse and wagon and journey to the city. Part way there, the wagon breaks an axle and they are forced to return home. Again, the child noodges; again the father is persuaded, and again they get a short distance when catastrophe befalls them again: the horse loses a shoe. With that, they again return home and the father — the misnagid — tells the boy to stop bothering him. It was a foolish idea to seek the rebbe and he will not again waste his time.

The boy continues to long for the rebbe, and soon thereafter he dies. The distraught father now seeks an answer: For what was the boy searching? Why had he wanted so much to see the rebbe? The father now journeys to the town on his own, without impediment, and asks the holy man if he knows why the son had been so committed to this meeting. “Your son was the wick,” the rebbe tells the father, “and I am the flame. Had he come to me, our meeting would have ignited the coming of the Messiah.”
“The lesson here,” I tell my family, “is that you should never let impediments get in the way of your journey. One never knows when a missed opportunity will deprive the world of light.” Everyone agrees that this is a wonderful story. Maybe, if we limp along on the donut, the Messiah will come.

“On the other hand,” says Steve, “maybe we are not heeding the signs, which are telling us to avoid this trip. Maybe there is a catastrophe ready to befall us along the way, and the flat tire is Hashem’s way of telling us to hang back.”

“Aren’t you saying that life is just a Ouija board?” Fran asks. “How are we supposed to read the signs, to know which is the path Hashem is choosing?” Our spiritual discussion lasts for several miles as we plod and chat our way back on the slower, back roads. Everywhere we see good tires, but they are attached to other cars. Like the misnagid father, we take the safe path. We turn back.

The next morning, despite our return home, life does seem brighter, as if just bumping along on the donut and seeking the path has generated a spiritual light. At breakfast Zoe sums it up best. “I’m glad it happened,” my eight-year-old announces to us all. “Because I’m the wick — and Build-A-Bear is the flame.”

And now we all know what can happen if we bring the wick to the flame.

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Slice of Life
My "Jew Year Resolutions"

The old year, Tishrai 5762, has ended, and we are in the year 5763, according to the Jewish calendar. To those of us who attended Hebrew school and paid no attention during classes, it means we are leaving the year 2002 and entering the year, 2003.

How differently we celebrate the Jewish New Year in comparison to the Julian New Year. We contemplate our sins over the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah; and, we try to forget our sins over the Julian New Year.

We eat heavy Jewish food and drink sweet wine on Yontifbut we eat in a Chinese restaurant or in a gourmet establishment and drink martinis, expensive wine or champagne on December 31st.

We celebrate the Jewish holidays with our family but we celebrate New Year’s Eve with our friends.
We make promises to God over the Jewish holidays but we make resolutions to ourselves over the Julian New Year.

Do you know the most common resolutions a person makes on New Year’s Eve? To stop smoking and to lose weight.

Well, I already stopped smoking and I’ve been working on the weight situation for years already. I find it rather ludicrous when I make this resolution every New Year’s Eve, after eating a three-course meal, but I set that goal anyway.

If I look back at the resolutions I set for myself last year, I don’t think I did such a good job of keeping them. Some of my resolutions were:

• I promise to be nice to Sarah….but she’s such a nudnick wanting to know everything and telling nothing. Don’t you know those same people?

• I promise not to eavesdrop in a restaurant. Oh right, then I’ll have nothing to write about in the column.

• I promise to smile whenever my husband says he wants to go food shopping with me…oy!

• I promise to stop forwarding emails even if it means I break the “chain of good luck,” and the sky will fall on my head.

• I promise to go to temple more often to make up a minyan.

• I promise not to beep at the car in front of me even though the car doesn’t move when the light turns green.

• I promise not to use my cell phone as an appendage.

• I promise to be more open-minded and accepting of constructive criticism.

• I promise to forgive and to forget…Oh, forget this one altogether !

• I promise to be a supportive and loving wife, a loving mother and a loving grandmother…but these are not promises. These are “givens.” They are an ingrained part of any Jewish mother and grandmother; actually, you don’t have to be Jewish to make this resolution.

Now remember when you make your resolutions, make them realistic. You don’t want to, chas v’chalilah, make the same mistakes again.

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Op-Ed

Bush Road Map is Premature

The Bush Administration is wise to resist the growing international pressure for it to issue its “road map” for peace between Israel, the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world. With a military action against Iraq likely, the White House must be tempted to think about placating the Arab world by endorsing actions that would pressure Israel to make premature concessions toward recognizing a permanent Palestinian state. But no tolerable amount of bribery is going to produce real Arab allies for an armed strike against Saddam Hussein, and thrusting the “road map” directly into the Israeli elections is likely to deepen that nation’s divisions on the most effective steps it can take to assure its security.

The details of the “road map” that have been leaked so far suggest it offers no particular exciting breakthrough in thinking about the long-term needs of Israel and the Palestinians. For all practical purposes, the two-state solution was adopted in the Oslo peace accords a decade ago. The world has no great need for another Arab state, but Jordan has never wanted to adopt the Palestinians within their nation and the unremitting violence and hatred of the last 27 months has made it plain that Israel must never accept them as citizens of the Jewish state.

And what has been said about the plan suggests it does nothing to compel Arab states to guarantee Israel’s right to exist. It tasks the Palestinians with trying to shut down forces like Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade of Fatah, but does not seem to deny them statehood when they fail to meet that challenge. Nor does it seem to absolutely rule out a continuing leadership role for Yasser Arafat, saying only that the new state should have a prime minister with real executive authority.
It reasonably calls on Israel to dismantle any settlements that have gone up in the last two years, but it also requires the IDF to get out of the West Bank and Gaza cities where they have been operating to good effect in recent weeks.

The “road map” already suffers from credibility problems. Its timetable for actions – an interim Palestinian state next year, an end to the terror, a permanent new state in 2005 – rests on no known history of any agreements in this part of the world having been carried out on time. And its demands that Israel accept Palestinian promises without real verification reflect wishful thinking rather than clear-eyed historical understanding of the continuing Arab hatred of “the Zionist enemy.”

So letting it rest for another month seems the wise course. Let Israeli voters first determine what course they want to follow, then adapt the road map to help get to that destination.

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Three Magnificent Ideas Are Here to Stay

The year’s end offers a chance to stand back and look at the larger picture, to consider one’s blessings and discount worries, to ask whether the headlines that fill one’s head are the total picture or even a representative one.

In doing so, one can have no better guide than Michael Mandelbaum, a leading foreign policy analyst and author of the recently published book The Ideas That Conquered the World (PublicAffairs). What those ideas might be are spelled out in his subtitle: Peace, democracy, and free markets.

Mandelbaum argues that an epochal achievement has taken place, almost without notice, as these three concepts have vanquished the competition.

Now, being in favor of no-war, political openness, and wealth may at first glance seem banal. Doesn’t everyone want them? Mandelbaum acknowledges they are clichés, “the political equivalent of Muzak,” but argues — and this is both the heart of his book and of our holiday cheer — that it is precisely their banality and near-universality that is so remarkable.

He shows that these ideas are in fact stunningly new and controversial. They date back merely to the late eighteenth century; for most of the prior human experience, they were dismissed as outlandish. And it took two long centuries for them to succeed.

• Peace: War was traditionally seen as the natural condition of states and no one imagined a change. As a British jurist wrote, “War appears to be as old as mankind but peace is a modern invention.” Only in the past couple of centuries did the idea develop of making peace the normal condition, yet even then old-fashioned monarchs and new-fashioned Nazis and communists resisted. Only now, especially with the spread of democracies, has the prospect of ending war become a realistic goal.

• Democracy: It used to be called “mob rule” and was despised from the ancient Greeks forward — how could the unwashed masses make intelligent political decisions? Nazis and communists took this distrust to new extremes, centralizing all key decisions among a handful of leaders. Despite much resistance, democracy spread in the last century from a few English-speaking countries to much of the world.

• Free markets: The notion that governments can and should increase the wealth of their populations is a radically new one. Until the Industrial Revolution in England two centuries ago, wealth was understood as static and zero-sum; the more I make, the less you do. Then came the Nazi and communist ideologies, which placed nearly all economic power in the hands of the state. Only in the past decade has it become widely accepted that restraining governmental power is the key to prosperity (“globalization”).

During the nineteenth century, these three ideas had to combat the forces of tradition until those collapsed in the First World War. Then emerged an even deadlier enemy, the two radical utopian ideologies of fascism and communism, which for 70 years glorified war, created totalitarian regimes, and controlled all aspects of life, including the economy.

But now, at last, the argument is settled. For the first time ever, the triad of peace, democracy, and free markets has no serious rival. Its message is also widely (though not universally) accepted and increasingly practiced. Russia, Mandelbaum points out, has a rough and ready democracy and a market economy. China has at least the second. India has both, as does Latin America. East and Southeast Asia are following the same path. There are even hopeful signs in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Arab Middle East, and the Muslim world in general, stand out as the great exception. But that, Mandelbaum convincingly argues, is the point: they are the exception — even if a large, consequential, and dangerous one — and not the rule.

My one disagreement with Mandelbaum’s excellent analysis concerns the Middle East. This region worries him for several reasons (terrorist networks, oil and gas reserves, weapons of mass destruction), but in terms of the ideas that are his core topic. Whereas he dismisses militant Islam, I see this ideology representing no less profound a challenge as did fascism and communism.

Still, Mandelbaum’s main point remains: that peace, democracy, and free markets “characterize the conduct of human affairs at the outset of the third millennium” is surely a blessing we should be thankful for.

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CARL ALPERT Carl Alpert writes from Israel.

HAIFA — The political climate in the country is rapidly approaching the boiling point and will continue to heat up until the elections on January 28. Twenty-nine parties have qualified to present candidates for the Knesset, though a few may yet drop out for lack of the financial capacity to conduct a campaign, as well as the perseverance to remain in the race. Five are Arab parties, and their role on the electoral scene is deserving of special attention.

Close to 600,000 Israeli Arabs have the right to vote. If they were to unite behind one party and turn out en masse for the elections, they could send to the Knesset a very sizable parliamentary bloc, which could exercise considerable influence on the proceedings. In reality, however, they are highly fragmented and torn by personality clashes as well as by differences of opinion on such issues as fundamentalism, socio-economic matters, pan-Arab attitudes, secularism, concepts of a Palestine state and other problems.

Complicating the situation even further for them is a growing movement that calls upon Arab citizens to boycott the elections altogether on the grounds that they should not demonstrate any form of loyalty to Israel at a time when their sympathies should be with the proposed Palestine state. What success this call has will be demonstrated only on election day.

In the meantime, even the Jewish political parties, alert for every possible vote in the highly competitive polling, have cast an eye on the Arab voting potential. Left wing Meretz, with a markedly warm attitude toward the Arabs, has placed an Arab among the first ten of its list of candidates, with good chances of his being elected. The move will no doubt divert many Arab votes to Meretz. The Labor Party has placed an Arab in slot number 20 on its list, and the desire to assure his election might draw many of his compatriots to vote for that party, especially since the leader of the party, Amram Mitzna, is seen as a moderate and friend of the Arabs, in contrast to Arik Sharon.

Even the Likud has placed a Druze in its number 22 slot, with positive assurance of election. Why would members of the minorities vote for a right wing Jewish party? Dr. Elie Rekhess, director of the Tel Aviv University Program on Arab Politics in Israel, gives the answer: patronage. The parties that win or that form the new government will be in a position to make appointments, allocate concessions or distribute other plums to their supporters, and blocs of voters often opportunistically make sure that the potential winners know of their support.

All these factors, in addition to the internal competitiveness in the Arab community, create a situation of doubt as to the outcome. The extremists proclaim that the five Arab parties in the present Knesset have not sufficiently served Arab interests. A vociferous youth group, Sons of the Village, is capitalizing on the situation to demand that instead of voting for the Israeli Knesset, the country’s Arabs should demand the establishment of an all-Arab parliament to deal with life and the problems of Israel’s Arabs, and eventually unite with the Palestine state-to-be.

The existing Arab parties, while not denying their identification as Palestinians, insist that under present circumstances progress can be made only through the Knesset, which provides a platform from which they can voice their views and their demands.

The latest public opinion poll, conducted at the University of Haifa, finds that 70 percent of the Arabs may go to the polls and will send nine Arabs to the Knesset from the Arab political parties. These will probably be joined by three additional Arabs running on the slates of Jewish parties.

All outstanding questions will be answered when the ballots are counted on January 28.

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LEONARD FEIN Leonard Fein usually writes from Boston.

JERUSALEM — They eat lunch together every Friday, at a bustling restaurant near the center of town. A police commander, a television producer, a writer of children’s books (who has just rendered Genesis in rhyme), a community organizer, a state prosecutor, a distinguished novelist. Their children drop in, then go off to their own tables. People shift from this table to that, the constellations of friends changing all the time. Yes, Israel is a neighborhood pretending to be a country, and Jerusalem’s a family pretending to be a city — or, more correctly, a collection of families, since in this restaurant there is no kippah (yarmulke). There’s talk of the Likud vote-buying scandal, other political gossip. I wait for some reference to the matzav, the situation, as the ongoing conflict with all of its ramifications is called. There is none.

Dinner with an architect, a professor, three senior social workers, and again, no reference at all to the matzav. Instead, jokes, Jewish geography, this and that, until finally, as it is getting time to leave, I ask: At what level do you experience the fear? And suddenly it is no longer time to leave, the conversation floods as if it has been waiting for an excuse to happen. My hostess rushes her two year-old daughter to school every morning, not breathing free until the child has been delivered. She does all her shopping for the week in one trip, feels safe only when at home. The others chime in with their own stories. And so it goes at every encounter. They do not mind, not at all, my raising the subject, they even seem relieved that a visitor has freed them up, enabled them to articulate that which social correctness here keeps hidden away most of the time.

Waiting, and not knowing what they are waiting for. The elections? The next suicide bombing? The next political scandal? The war in Iraq? The messiah? American intervention? A nation suddenly rendered aimless, survival its only agenda and a heavy fist its only tactic. In the meantime, the matzav provides the alibi for everything: The collapse of the economy? Prime Minister Sharon says the economy cannot be repaired until the conflict’s over.

The continuing scourge of traffic deaths? Collateral damage, a response to the pressures of the conflict. The fact that in a recent survey, a third of all Israeli Jews between the ages of 22 and 30 do not expect to be in Israel 10 years from now? Obviously, the conflict. Twenty-two percent of Israeli children and teenagers live under the poverty line — and 54 percent of non-Jewish youth? Later; just now, the survey shows, 60 percent are worried about terror, just 20 percent about social gaps. As if the conflict provides an excused absence from attending to the domestic agenda.

Sharon, seeking valiantly to stem the Likud hemorrhage, moves almost daily more towards the center, today announcing that he will not appoint to his cabinet anyone who opposes a Palestinian state. As it happens, that will leave him unable to appoint most of the Likud members who served as ministers in his last government — unless, of course, he is quietly whispering to them that his leftward drift is merely, in its own way, a vote-buying scheme, not to be taken all that seriously.

Everyone agrees that the electoral system is in desperate need of major reform. But first, of course, there’s the matzav, the conflict. After it’s over, we’ll see.

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Letters/Commentary

JCC Deserves Support
I feel very fortunate to have in such close proximity the Jewish Community Center of the North Shore. The JCC serves us in so many important ways.

Working out next to me in the JCC’s fitness center on an exercise bike is a 20-something new mother (who was able to take one hour for herself because of the on-site babysitting service offered). Directly in front of me is a 70-something gentleman who knows everyone by their first name and is genuinely concerned when he doesn’t see one of the “regulars” on a daily basis. As I walk the halls my heart is lifted by the sounds of a musical group entertaining the seniors while they play a spirited game of bridge and enjoy the camaraderie of their friends. On other occasions, I have witnessed the excitement of the pre-school children on their way to the playground.

The mitzvah of a JCC employee reaching out to a member who was confused about transportation remains in my head. The employee wanted to ensure that the woman arrived home safely and so hopped into her car to perform the good deed herself.

I know the memories that I’m making as a member of the JCC are those that I will cherish and I know that I’m not the only one...Adam Sandler in his new animated movie, Eight Crazy Nights, refers fondly to his JCC as a place where he grew up. Some of us literally grew up at a JCC or have had children grow up there — whatever the connection, it seems to run deep.

How do we support this very worthy agency that affects us all at some time in our lives? By joining and supporting its varied programs, or by being a friend and contributing to the JCC’s annual community appeal. But above all, get involved.

Diane Knopf
Swampscott
(Note: The writer is a vice president of the JCC.)

Cantor Praises Journal
After a very active cantorial career, I am now fully retired and have time for reading The Journal cover to cover — except for the Russian section, which I can’t understand. The three things I like best about the paper are:

1. It helps me remain a part of the Jewish community due to the excellent coverage of Jewish community affairs, both the good and the not so good.

2. The articles about Israel and our need to do our share to help her are important ones.

3. The articles about our religious, social, and financial activities as a community.

These are but a few of the reasons The Journal and its values appeal to seniors such as myself.

(Ret.) Cantor
Morton S. Shanok
Peabody

On Interfaith Service
Thanks so much for writing the article, Churches, Synagogue Join to Support Israel (Dec. 20). This article is a blessing. The service was one of historical proportions and one that so moved me I can to this day feel the presence of God between the Conquistos Ministerios, Temple Shalom, and Christian Renewal. I am smiling. God is Good!

Michelle Pare
Salem

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