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Son of Salem to Retire After 30 Years On and Overseeing the Bench

Gary Band
Jewish Journal Staff

SALEM — After a distinguished 50-year career of public service that began with serving four terms on the Salem City Council from Ward 6, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts District Courts Sam Zoll will officially retire on June 20. He served as a judge for 31 years.

“I can’t believe it’s happened so quickly,” Zoll said from his home on Chestnut Street.

Zoll’s father came to Salem from Lithuania in the mid-1920s at age 13. With no formal schooling and unable to speak English, he lived in an apartment on Boston Street with his three sisters and two brothers who preceded him. At one time, there were 10 people living in the four room apartment.

But another brother, and later his wife and their five children, did not choose to immigrate and were all killed in the Holocaust.

Zoll’s father, Joseph, worked in leather shoe factories in Peabody and Lynn. In 1933 he married Frances, and the Zolls had two children, Mike and Sam.

His mom was a bookkeeper by training and a corsetiere who owned a shop on North Street. “My parents were highly respected in the community and I benefitted from their fine reputation,” Zoll says.

When he was only 8 years old, Sam began delivering newspapers every day to homes throughout Salem with his brother Mike, now a golf pro on Martha’s Vineyard who once gave President Clinton lessons.

Growing up in North Salem, Sam continued to deliver papers — and also milk — through middle and high school, at one point delivering 400 papers a day and 1100 on Sundays.

“These products were extremely important to people in terms of punctuality and reliability,” Zoll says. “I always felt that responsibility and tried to do my very best.”

He attended Salem High School, a year at Salem State College and transferred to Boston University where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in accounting in 1954. He then enlisted in the Navy during the Korean War and served until 1956. “I felt I had an obligation,” he said. He went on to earn a Master‘s degree at BU, attended Suffolk Law School at night, and earned his law degree in the early 60s, all before the age of 30.

A member of Sons of Israel in Peabody as a kid, when he married the former Marjorie Waldman, they joined Temple Shalom in Salem. “We’ve always been members and all my kids became bar and bat mitzvah there.”
After Zoll’s four terms on the Salem City Council from Ward Six, one of them as president of the council, he was elected Mayor of Salem at the age of 35 in 1969.

And, after three years as mayor, he served as a State Representative from Salem and Swampscott before being appointed as a judge in the Ipswich District Court by Governor Francis Sargent, then as the Presiding Justice of the Salem District Court eight months later in 1973; and finally, was appointed as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts District Courts by Governor Michael Dukakis in 1976.

“I have been extremely fortunate that the people of Salem gave me such an opportunity to serve and entrusted me with that privilege from a very early age,” Zoll says. “I’ve always considered every position I’ve had to be that of a fiduciary.... I’ve also been blessed with a wonderfully supportive family, and received immense support from neighbors and friends in the community.”

In recent years, Zoll has served in a supervisory capacity in the District Courts instead of ruling on individual cases. At the height of this work, he was responsible for overseeing 176 judges, 69 clerks, and 3,500 employees from 69 separate courts from the Berkshires to Cape Cod.

But Salem is his favorite city. “I have a passion for this place,” Zoll says. “My kids say I can’t breathe outside Salem. I think it’s the greatest place in the world.”
Of his time as Mayor, Zoll is most proud of the urban renewal projects he helped implement, always giving credit to others for the work, insisting they were not “singular accomplishments.”

“I loved the position,” he says. It was fascinating and challenging, and I always viewed my mission as one of being an inspiration to others and trying to enhance the stature and operation of the city.

He points to the building of the Shaughnessy Kaplan Rehabilitation Hospital, the Witchcraft Heights Elementary School, the Bates School and the fire station on Essex Street as some of the most important city projects during his administration.

“I’m most proud that I attracted the best people to government,” Zoll says. “Every mayor we’ve had has done everything he could to preserve the economic, cultural and sociological mix of this great city. Salem has always been an undiscovered treasure.”

When he ran for reelection, he received over 70 percent of the votes cast. “I viewed that as a referendum on how we did,” the former mayor said.

As for the change from elected to appointed official, Zoll says it is a “different calling but equally important. No other official has the power to decide cases that have to do with personal liberty. It’s a very sobering charge that you don’t fully appreciate until you get there.”

Zoll credits his wife — a concert pianist and the organist at Temple Israel in Swampscott until three years ago — for inspiring him to pursue a career in public service.
“When I was teaching after law school and we were living in a third floor apartment with one child and another on the way, I asked her whether or not I could continue teaching or should I take the bar. She said, let’s take a chance. I probably wouldn’t have done it without her encouragement.”

Zoll says he has been told that he is the longest sitting Chief Justice in the Commonwealth going back to 1626.

“My father always said that you can lose your money, you can lose your health, but never lose your reputation. That has guided me everyday.”
And in addition to this advice, Sam and Marjorie have no doubt imparted a great deal more to their four kids: Rachel, a national religion writer for the Associated Press; Cheryl, a linguistics professor at MIT; Resa, a lawyer in Jerusalem; and Barry who works for Honda.

Anyone who has lived in Salem for any length of time knows the Zolls well.

Charlie Reardon, a Navy Veteran, sitting on a bench on Salem Common, smiled broadly at the mention of Sam’s name.

“You couldn’t meet a nicer guy,” he said with affection. “I knew Sam back when he used deliver newspapers. He always helped people out his whole life. One time I remember he started a fund for a family who was having trouble paying their heating bill by taking money right out of his own pocket. He’s a real mensch. I can’t say enough good about him.

Gg ” he says.

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From Survival to Social Justice Work:
Holocaust Center to Honor Sonia Weitz

Gary Band
Jewish Journal Staff

PEABODY — If not for her sister Blanca Borell, Sonia Weitz of Peabody says she would not have survived the Holocaust. And though the world would no doubt be a better place had the 84 other members of their family not been killed by the Nazis, the sisters lived to carry on their family name and tell the stories — from before, during and after the war — that should never be forgotten.

While Blanca, for reasons of her own, has never spoken publicly about her horrific time in the concentration camps, Sonia has. In her book, I Promised I Would Tell, and through the Holocaust Center — which she and Harriet Tarnor Wacks founded in 1981 — Sonia has reached over 150,000 teenagers and adults throughout Massachusetts and beyond, and has vocalized the urgent need for people to stand up in the face of any form of injustice.

“Just to talk about our own experiences would be unthinkable,” Weitz said during an interview at the Holocaust Center at the Peabody Library. “Others suffered as well. The Armenian, Cambodian and Bosnian genocides, the situation today in Rwanda and the Sudan.... Let’s not only remember and be informed about past atrocities, but speak up and do something about present ones.”

Weitz says it would be “totally useless” to do what the Center does educating people about the Holocaust if they didn’t care about and advocate for other people who are, and have been, victims of persecution. “To have 2000 books on our shelves is great for studying and remembering our history,” she says, “but if there’s not some connection made to other world issues, the lessons are lost. It would be totally baseless to do what we do and not care about others.”

Sonia and Blanca were in the Krakow Ghetto and five concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Bergen-Belson, over what Sonia calls “six years of darkness.”

“But we were always together,” Sonia says. “I feel that I survived because of her. I was always rebelling, trying to escape, but Blanca had much more sense than I did.”

Weitz points out that people don’t realize how much resistance and rebellion there was in the camps.

“Even in Auschwitz there was an active movement to disable the crematoriums. Of course the people who did destroy them didn’t live to tell about it, but two out of the five they had there were destroyed.”

And though the horror of the camps is hard to describe, Weitz does so in her 100-page book with moving and poignant poetry and prose. A critic once wrote that if you want to teach people about the Holocaust, give them Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz. If such a value judgement can be made, Weitz’s book is better.

“For Blanca and me, Bergen-Belson was much worse than Auschwitz,” she writes. “The guards dumped three hundred of us in a barrack that had room for about fifty people. We had no blankets, no bunks, no food, no space, no latrines. It was the perfect breeding ground for typhus and other diseases that thrive in unsanitary conditions. Everybody in Bergen-Belson had typhus.

“After we had been in Bergen-Belson for several weeks, we heard that a transport would be leaving for another camp, a labor camp. We desperately wanted to be on that transport. By this time Blanca was sick with typhus...Miraculously, she passed the selection along with me and about 30 other women.

“Very few people survived Bergen-Belson. So this transport probably saved our lives. On the other hand, had we remained and had we been able to survive for just a little while longer, we would have been set free by the British. There were so many ‘could have beens,’ so many ‘what ifs.’ These tricks of fate haunt all Holocaust survivors because survival was nothing but dumb luck, pure and simple.

“It was in Mauthausen that our nightmare finally came to end,” Weitz writes in Chapter 7. “But not immediately. I remember that when we arrived at Mauthausen we had to climb a large hill to get from the train to the camp itself. Marching up that hill was really above and beyond what we were capable of. In our group of five, Edzia and I were still very sick with typhus. So the other three had to drag the two of us up that hill. I say ‘had to’ because if you were unable to climb that hill, SS guards threw you into wagons heaped with bodies — some dead, some still alive.

“Mostly I remember praying they would let us go to the latrines. My sister was just dragging herself around, trying to keep me alive. I think another day or two would have been too late for me.

“And then it happened. Much later, I found out the date — May 4, 1945. Blanca came yelling to tell me that the Kapos, guards, and SS had disappeared. The next day, May 5, at 11:30 a.m., American army tanks entered Mauthausen. The prisoners themselves opened the gates to let the Americans in. And it was over!”

Blanca, who had married a man named Norbert Borell before the war, was miraculously reunited with him. He was also a prisoner at Mauthausen beginning in the summer of 1944. He survived, and was liberated along with Sonia and Blanca. But their mother and father did not survive; and Sonia and many others were very sick.
“Despite medical attention, thousands of survivors died within days and weeks of liberation,” Sonia writes. “My life hung in the balance. Almost 17 years old, I weighed only 60 pounds.”

But within a month at the Hart Displaced Persons Camp in Linz, Austria, she began to recover. And Norbert was involved in the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and camp politics, “fighting for our community as well as for the rights of its individual members,” Sonia writes.

Meanwhile, the trial at Nuremberg was going on, resulting in the hanging of 25 defendants, 97 who received 25-year prison terms, and 20 sentenced to life terms.
And all during this time, Norbert was searching for his uncle, Harry White, who left Poland before the war and settled somewhere near Boston. “Finally,” Sonia writes “in late 1947, Norbert met someone who told him that Harry and his family lived in Peabody, Massachusetts. Norbert wrote to Uncle Harry, who immediately agreed to sponsor us. Finally, we qualified for entry into the United States.

“On May 4, 1948, three years after the gates of Mauthausen had been opened by its inmates, Blanca, Norbert and I arrived in New York. A few days later, Uncle Harry and his wonderful family welcomed us to Peabody. There, they helped us find an apartment as well as jobs at a local factory.”

At age 19, Sonia began her life in the United States. At the time, she writes, most Americans did not want to hear about the experiences of Holocaust survivors. The word Holocaust was not even part of the vocabulary. “And so, in the beginning, I did not speak out. I concentrated instead on building a normal life.”

Sonia tried going out on some dates, but they were all disastrous, she writes. “The young people I met in 1948 came from another world.”

Then in 1949, she met Dr. Mark Weitz when he was making a house call and fell in love with him. Mark was different from the young men I had dated,” Sonia writes. “He was older and more mature. He had served with the medical corps during the war and had been injured during the invasion of Normandy. As a result of his wartime experiences, Mark knew something of the agonies people are capable of inflicting upon each other. He was strong enough to endure my past and help me live in the present. We were married in 1950. Two years later, our son was born. In 1955, we had twin daughters.”

They were married for almost 50 years before Dr. Weitz passed away in 2000.

Throughout the 50s and 60s, Sonia lived a life comparable to any other American wife and mother. But she could not forget her mother’s last words: “Remember to tell the world.” But how?

“When I first learned that historical revisionists were promoting books which claimed that the Holocaust had not taken place, I thought, “This must be a joke. How could seemingly intelligent people deny an event that had been thoroughly documented by the murderers themselves.... But I had to do something! I could not remain silent! ‘Well, I’ll do it my way,’ I told myself. After all, I do have a weapon. I am a survivor, an eyewitness, and it is about time I spoke out.”

The timing was good for Sonia’s inner declaration. In the late 70s, there was a growing interest, even curiosity, about the Holocaust. First, she spoke at a local high school.
“Then a young reporter asked for an interview. Her name was Harriet Tarnor Wacks. Harriet wrote a sensitive and accurate article about my experiences. We quickly became friends. With her encouragement, I accepted more interviews and speaking engagements. Besides being a writer, Harriet is also a teacher. Salem State College soon asked us to teach a course about the Holocaust. Finally, in 1981, Harriet and I founded the Holocaust Center of the North Shore. Its purpose was to promote Holocaust awareness by exploring the uniqueness of this historical event, and to apply its universal lessons to combat current racism, anti-Semitism and bigotry. We are still deeply committed to this work.”

After returning to Auschwitz and her childhood home in Krakow with the late Lenny Zakim and Cardinal Bernard Law, Sonia got involved with Facing History and Ourselves. And through the encouragement of the organization and from the students she spoke with, her book, originally 500 pages, was published in 1993.

“I’ve been lucky to be able to express my feelings and experiences in the book and in speaking to students,” Sonia says. “Many people cannot do that. But if you can, witnesses have an obligation to speak out, to warn you that it can happen, to be aware of what’s going on around you. We do make a difference, but as as long as there are neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and anti-Semitism here and in Europe, there is so much more that needs to be done.”

For information and tickets for the June 17 First Annual Social Justice and Human Rights Award Tribute Dinner, call the Holocaust Center at 978-531-8288.

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As Maccabi Games Approach, Local Athletes, Coaches and Reporters Gear Up

Michael Sidman
Special to The Jewish Journal

Every four years the JCC Maccabi Games, the largest organized sports program for Jewish teenagers in the world, comes to an American city. While the Jewish Community of the North Shore has been active in the Maccabi Games in the past, this year is an especially exciting one because the Games are coming to Boston.

“It’s in our backyard,” says North Shore’s Boys Head Basketball Coach David Pliner, “We have tremendous enthusiasm and momentum here.” But for the Jewish Community of the North Shore, this year’s Maccabi Games offer more excitement than its Boston venue. “We have taken a more active role,” says Pliner, “we are housing over 150 kids.”
Nearly 1700 Jewish teens from across the United States, Canada, Australia, Venezuela, Great Britain, and Israel are flocking to the area.

“We have to find host families for them,” says Swampscott resident Phil Sloan, who runs a sport management marketing firm and will be in charge of this year’s proceedings. This is the first year that the Maccabi Games has brought in a professional to take charge, and Sloan has risen to the occasion. “I’m excited about this,” says Sloan, “I’m going to take a year off and give something back to my yiddishkeit. It’s opened up a whole new world for me.”

The North Shore Jewish Community is rallying behind Sloan in many ways. Volunteers from all over the community are offering themselves for services such as transportation, food, and security. Sloan and the others who have dedicated themselves to putting these games together needed to recruit 550 host families and over 1000 volunteers. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,” says Sloan, “We still need more host families, more volunteers.”

Because the North Shore has offered so much assistance in this year’s Maccabi Games, more teens were given the opportunity to take part. This year the North Shore will be sending its largest delegation of 45 teens to participate in sports such as golf, basketball, swimming, tennis, table tennis, and baseball.

But as Coach Pliner says, “The athletics are secondary to the bonding I see every year between theses kids from all over the world. There is nothing more important we can be doing as a community. This is a great opportunity to give them.”

This is also a special year for Pliner because his 13-year-old daughter, Hallie, will be on the girl’s basketball team and his 15-year-old son, Jared, will be taking part in the Star Reporter program, acting as a liaison between the games and the North Shore media. “For the last five years my family has been spectators,” says Pliner, “and to have them participating now is very special for me.”

There is still a lot to be done before the Maccabi Games officially begin on August 15. Contributions of kosher food, host families, and volunteers are still needed. “Co-chairs Jason and Judy Chudnofsky have done an amazing job on the private fundraising side,” says Sloan. For his part, Sloan has been tackling corporate sponsorship for the games. Eastern Bank is the presenting sponsor, and other big names such as Beth-Israel Deaconess and BMW Gallery of Norwell have offered their sponsorship.

One evening the Kraft family has donated Gillette Stadium to the teens for a giant tailgate party, and the Fireman family has donated volunteer t-shirts on behalf of Reebok. Sloan is in the process of raising $1 million and is raffling off a two-year lease on a BMW Z4 Roadster. Raffle tickets are $100 and can be purchased at opening ceremonies at the Fleet Center on August 15th. Tickets to opening ceremonies are complimentary to JCC members and can be picked up with a photo ID.

“The moment in time in which these 1700 Jewish teens march out,” says Sloan, “and all 10,000 or more of us are singing Hatikva together — no one will want to miss it.”

For more information or to sign up as a volunteer, contact Cari Berger of the JCC at 781-631-8330 x150, call the Maccabi Hotline at 617-558-6447, or visit www.maccabiboston.org.

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International News

Egypt to the Rescue in Gaza?

Gil Sedan
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

JERUSALEM — The latest coalition crisis hasn’t been all bad for Ariel Sharon: For one thing, it has helped kindle a friendship with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Over the last several days, Mubarak and the Israeli prime minister have held several telephone conversations on how to push forward Sharon’s disengagement plan from the Palestinians, despite the political obstacles Sharon faces at home.

In a conversation May 31, Mubarak reiterated his support for Sharon’s plan and promised to promote it internationally.

But Mubarak’s role goes far deeper, according to the Egyptian state news agency, Mena. The agency reported that both Israel and the Palestinians have accepted an Egyptian plan for a cease-fire, a resumption of peace talks and a meeting between Sharon and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei.

The report could not be confirmed in Israel.

Right-wing figures in Israel have voiced reservations about the shifting winds in Israel’s latest political drama.

News of Egypt’s expanding role came as Sharon battled opposition to his disengagement plan within his own Likud Party and Cabinet, and amid growing pressure from Washington for progress toward an Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip.

Washington is urging Israel to lay the groundwork for the withdrawal in cooperation with the Palestinians. Sharon’s chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, went to Washington to meet with President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Shalom headed to Cairo. The official purpose was to set up a joint committee “to improve relations between the two countries.”
But behind the scenes was an attempt to create a dramatic change: For the first time since 1967, Egypt might play a role in the Gaza Strip.

It would function not as a ruling authority, as it did from 1948 to 1967 but, Israel hopes, as an honest broker helping the transition to Palestinian rule and preventing arms smuggling from Egypt into Gaza.

Once Israel begins withdrawing troops and settlers from Gaza, some 200 Egyptian military experts would help P.A. security services impose their rule over the crowded strip, halting terrorist attacks and setting the stage for an orderly and complete Israeli withdrawal.

In the meantime, Sharon is gaining politically from these new developments with Egypt: He has signaled to his rivals in the Likud that he means business and is laying the groundwork for a withdrawal.

Mubarak benefits by demonstrating that he is doing something on behalf of the Palestinians, something many Egyptians have sought for a long time. At the same time, Egypt’s involvement weakens Hamas, which stands to lose from an orderly transition to P.A. rule, and limits the radical Islamist group’s power base in Gaza, on Egypt’s doorstep.

In the past two years, Egypt has improved its relations with Hamas. The country allowed the opening of a Hamas office in Cairo, and Egypt mediated in talks between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority over a possible cease-fire last year.

But relations between Egypt and Hamas cooled after Israel’s killings of Hamas leaders Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantissi. The terrorist group’s leadership has shifted more toward Damascus.

The new Egyptian-Israeli dialogue came despite Israel’s killings of the Hamas leaders — indeed, perhaps because of them.

Contrary to many doomsday prophesies, Egypt has not turned its back on Israel over the killings. Even Israel’s recent military incursion into Gaza — which led Turkey to threaten to recall its ambassador from Tel Aviv — did not deter Mubarak from getting involved.

Omar Suleiman, Cairo’s intelligence chief and a seasoned Middle East peace broker, has been paying frequent visits to Jerusalem and Ramallah, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority.

But some Israeli experts are raising their eyebrows over Egypt’s return to the arena.

“I must say that I am concerned,” said Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. For years, Steinitz has suspected Egypt’s motives in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying “the real policy of Egypt is to allow Israel and the Palestinians to bleed together.”

Steinitz blames the Egyptians for having failed to prevent arms smuggling from Egypt into the Gaza Strip — and perhaps for supporting it.

“For years we have said that the Palestinian Authority was not doing enough to fight terrorism, until we realized that the P. A. was a terror-supporting regime,” Steinitz said. “The same applies to the Egyptian authority.”

Other Israeli experts say they hope Egypt’s new role will help lift Israel out of the political mire.

Matan Vilnai, a leader of the Labor Party, said combating terrorism is “a high-profile Egyptian interest.”

“I believe the Egyptians are potentially very good allies,” he said in a recent radio interview.

Asked what has changed to spur the Egyptians to become more involved, Vilnai said, “If there is change, it is on the Israeli side, because the Egyptians have always been there.”

The Palestinian reaction to the developments was somewhat subdued. Following a meeting of Palestinian leaders at Yasser Arafat’s office in Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority issued a statement urging the dispatch of “international observers” to the Palestinian-populated territories. That could include Egyptian experts.
Other Palestinian groups said they hoped any Egyptian security role in Gaza would not serve the interests of the “Zionist enemy.”

Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas’ spokesman in Gaza, urged Palestinians and Arabs “not to be deceived by the Zionist premier Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal plan,” which he said was just a ploy in Sharon’s scheme of “murder and devastation.’’

If the Egyptians actually succeed in helping stabilize Gaza, their role could be a model for the West Bank, with Jordan serving as mediator there.

Israel’s talks with Cairo also could have more immediate effect: the departure of Arafat from quasi-detention at his compound in Ramallah.

In his talks in Jerusalem, Suleiman insisted that the Palestinian Authority president’s return to Gaza is paramount to restoring stability there.

But Israeli officials have indicated that there is no change in Israeli policy regarding Arafat: He can travel wherever he wants, but may not be allowed to return.

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JTA News

Sticks and Stones
JERUSALEM (JTA) — An Israeli human rights group called for a ban on public proposals to expel the country’s Arab citizens. The Mossawa Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel accused law enforcement authorities of failing to crack down on illegal racial incitement. It also called for a broader ban on political rhetoric that could be construed as harmful to Israeli Arabs, who constitute almost 20 percent of the country’s population. A slogan that tops the grievance list is for Israeli Arabs to be “transferred” out of the country. Last week, Transportation Minister Avigdor Lieberman proposed that Arabs found to be “disloyal” to the Jewish state be expelled.

Arafat to Stay Put
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel said it would turn down an Egyptian request to move Yasser Arafat to the Gaza Strip. Ha’aretz reported that Egypt, which has offered to help Prime Minister Ariel Sharon carry out his pledged pullout of Gaza, wants the Palestinian Authority president installed there as a figurehead leader to forestall an Islamist takeover. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom is to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to discuss the proposal, but the talks would focus on Egyptian help in preparing P.A. security forces for a Gaza withdrawal, with Arafat kept in his West Bank headquarters. “Our policy on Arafat remains unchanged,” one Israeli official said. “He is an obstacle to peace who should be kept out of the diplomatic process. If he wants to leave Ramallah, he can, but there is no guarantee he will be allowed to return.’’

A Coup for Converts?
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Those who convert to Judaism after immigrating to Israel can receive automatic citizenship, Israel’s high court ruled. The ruling by the High Court of Justice, which capped seven years of deliberations, was a victory for those who move to Israel for religious studies and then convert abroad, usually via Reform or Conservative rabbis. But the court stopped short of formally recognizing non-Orthodox conversions. It gave the state 45 days to prepare its arguments for preserving the status quo, in which Israel’s Interior Ministry accepts only Orthodox converts for immediate naturalization under the country’s Law of Return.

Israeli Spy Site Mobbed
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A web site for Israel’s spy agency was deluged with visitors. The new site for the Mossad attracted more than 350,000 visitors, drew 2,500 job applicants, and numerous tips during its first 48 hours online, the Jerusalem Post reported. The site, in both English and Hebrew, promises any information will remain private.

Columbia Eyes Israel Studies
NEW YORK (JTA) — Columbia University is hoping to fund a professorship in Israel studies. The move to raise an estimated $2 million to $4 million endowment could allay criticism that the New York City campus has become a center of anti-Israel activity, the New York Sun said. Columbia this year established a Middle East studies chair named after its late faculty member Edward Said, a prominent Palestinian and anti-Israel figure, funded in part by the United Arab Emirates, the Sun said. The school lured Rashid Khalidi, another Palestinian critic of Israel, to the post from the University of Chicago.

Ukraine Vows to Return Torahs
KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — A Ukrainian official pledged to help the Jewish community reclaim ownership of dozens of Torah scrolls confiscated during Communist rule. Victor Bondarenko, head of Ukraine’s State Committee on Religious Affairs, made the promise last week during a conference on religious freedom in Kiev. “It is necessary to transfer Torah scrolls to the possession of Jewish communities,” Bondarenko told JTA. He said the situation mars otherwise good relations between the state and the Jewish community in the former Soviet republic.

Pre-war Books Reprinted
NEW YORK (JTA) — Some 700 books from pre-war Eastern European Jewry have been reprinted thanks to the National Yiddish Book Center. The books depict daily Jewish life before the Holocaust through maps, illustrations, photos, and Yiddish and Hebrew text. Many contain lists of townspeople murdered by the Nazis. The books, part of the David and Sylvia Steiner Yizkor Books Collection, are available online at www.yiddishbookcenterorg/yizkorbooks.

Senators Want Action on ‘Gold Train’
NEW YORK (JTA) — U.S. senators pressed Attorney General John Ashcroft to resolve the case of Holocaust survivors who lost assets on the “Gold Train.” A bipartisan letter written by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) and signed by more than 15 other senators urged the Justice Department to help return items taken from Hungarian Jews by the Nazis, which were seized by U.S. forces in May 1945 on a train in Austria. A class-action lawsuit is pending in a U.S. court on the issue.

Walk for Israel Attracts 20,000
TORONTO (JTA) — More than 20,000 people joined Toronto’s 34th annual Walk with Israel, raising an estimated $365,000 for the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s annual fund-raising campaign. The walk also was intended to show concern over recent acts of anti-Semitism in the Toronto area and to express gratitude to the city for its support of the Jewish community.

Polls Show Jews Voting Democratic
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A majority of American Jews disapprove of the way President Bush is handling his job, according to a new poll. The Gallup Organization report found that 39 percent of Jews approve of Bush’s performance as president. The report added that “Bush will be hard-pressed to win the votes of Jewish Americans, given their continuing strong preference for the Democratic Party, as well as their majority disapproval of Bush.” The National Jewish Democratic Council said it was not surprised by the results, which were obtained through aggregate analysis of polls taken within the last two years. But the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matthew Brooks, said the results “are not an accurate predictor of how the vote is going to be in November,” because it predominantly assessed party affiliation rather than voting.

A Call to Import Jews to West Bank
NEW YORK (JTA) — Some Orthodox activists want to bring the “lost Jews” of Europe and Asia to the West Bank. The effort was revealed in ads for an annual concert in New York’s Central Park following a recent Salute to Israel parade, according to the Forward. The ads said the event was dedicated to the 36.6 million Jews “that were lost in the course of the generations and now wish to live in Israel.” They come from Afghanistan, Burma, India, Pakistan and include “the remnants of the Marranos in Spain and Portugal.” The ads also featured endorsements from groups such as the National Council of Young Israel, the Hebron Fund and Americans for a Safe Israel, but several of the group said they are unfamiliar with the effort, the Forward said.

Legendary Film Producer Honored
NEW YORK (JTA) — Academy Award-winning movie producer Arthur Cohn was honored in Israel. Cohn, who won an unprecedented six Oscars for such films as The Garden of the Finzi-Continis about Italian Jews during World War II, was given the Guardian of Zion award at Bar-Ilan University, the Jerusalem Post said. Cohn, a Swiss-born journalist who later turned to making films, also won an Oscar for the documentary One Day in September, about the Palestinian attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.

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People in the News

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Young Jewish Entrepreneurs

Susan Jacobs
Jewish Journal Staff

Editor’s Note: This is a part of an ongoing series of profiles about young Jewish entrepreneurs on the North Shore.

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Arts & Entertainment

Anthology by Female Authors Explores Mothers Who Were Hardly June Cleaver-Types

Susan Jacobs
Jewish Journal Staff

How I Learned to Cook and Other Writings on Complex Mother-Daughter Relationships, Margo Perin (Editor), Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 322 pages, $14.95.

Although many of us grew up with Jewish mothers who lovingly doted on all our moves and always had a pot of matzah ball soup simmering on the stovetop, not everyone was so lucky. Margo Perin has compiled an anthology of 19 essays by women whose mothers were hardly baleboostehs (loving homemakers). Many of the featured mothers were mentally unstable, alcoholic, and/or victims of domestic violence. Their relationships with their daughters ranged from dysfunctional and disinterested, to downright cruel.

The book contains pieces from several Jewish writers, including Ruth Kluger, Kim Chernin, Vivian Gornick, Kate Braverman, Paula Fox (who is half-Jewish), as well as the book’s editor, Margo Perin. Other contributors, who represent assorted classes and races, include Alice Walker, Jamaica Kincaid, Joyce Maynard, Nawal El Saadawi, Rosemary Daniell and Nahid Rachlin.

Childhood is supposed to be filled with innocence and joy, but these writers share memories that are heartachingly painful and sad. Jamaica Kincaid remembers her mother setting fire to her beloved books as punishment for failing to change her brother’s diaper. Ruth Kluger, who suffered through the Holocaust, remembers her mother actually encouraging her to walk into the lethal electric barbed wire that surrounded their Birkenau camp. Editor Perin is haunted by the memory of a rejecting mother who failed to provide the love, nurturing, and support that one should expect from a parent. And in How I Learned to Cook (which ultimately became the title of the collection), Hillary Gamerow recalls her mother casually telling the family after dinner that she spiked the meat loaf with rat poison, and that they would all be dead by morning. Although her mother was just bluffing, Gamerow becomes petrified that she might someday follow through on her threat, so the young girl teaches herself to cook in order to survive.

All of the contributing writers find ways to survive their harrowing experiences. Although they never forget their personal traumas, they don’t blame their moms for what they did (or did not) do. They struggle to understand the motives behind their mothers who were cruel or indifferent towards them. The anthology shatters the myth of The Loving Mother, and explores the darker side of women who were unable, or unwilling, to properly mother.

Margo Perin, who lives in San Francisco and leads creative writing seminars in the U.S., Europe, and Mexico, will be at Jabberwocky Bookshop in Newburyport on June 17. The Jewish Journal recently spoke with her.

JJ: Tell us about your process for getting this book published.
MP: It began when I wrote my own story about my mother. Previously, I had managed to write a book length memoir about my childhood without much mention of her. After I finished, I realized I had to write about my mother, to put the remaining puzzle pieces together. But something else took over while I was writing, and I realized I had a very different and much deeper question that was, are we able to love if our mothers, from whom we are supposed to learn love, don’t love us? After finishing my essay, I was curious about other women’s experiences. I found a handful of mother-daughter collections, but they all had a rather romanticized, idealized, and for me, unrealistic, view of the mother-daughter relationship. Hence my idea to create a collection, not only to compile literature on this taboo subject, but also to give other women permission to talk about the hitherto silenced realities of their relationships.

JJ: How did you choose which essays to include?
MP: I chose essays that were well-written, and fully explored these essential questions: what were the complexities in the relationship, how did the author survive, and why she thought her mother was the way she was. It was also important to me to include a range of voices. I grew up in several countries and wanted the book to be as inclusive as possible, to represent all women.

JJ: Were all the female authors you approached receptive to sharing their stories?
MP: No, a few said they couldn’t write about their mothers until they were dead. Sadly, one of them, whom I believe to be one of the best contemporary American writers, killed herself before that happened. Another writer said she couldn’t be in a book called “Unholy Mothers”, which was the original title. But the great majority of writers I approached were very excited about the idea.

JJ: What is your personal definition of a “good mother”?
MP: I’d say first of all, a mother is most likely to be “good” when she is valued and supported by society, and gets plenty of help with childrearing. And someone who works hard to be conscious about the pressures in her life that might be affecting her parenting so that her children don’t suffer for what’s going on, or not going on, in her life.

JJ: In your personal essay, “The Body Geographic”, you write about your own mother. What was she like?
MP: I think she was very damaged by her own childhood and didn’t have the resources I have, either emotional or social, to overcome those circumstances. I feel very sorry for her because she missed out on love and, therefore, never fully lived.

JJ: Do you have children, and if so, what type of mother are you?
MP: I purposely didn’t have children because I was so afraid of abusing them the way my parents abused me. By the time I figured out that you are your own separate person, not who your parents are, it was too late. I feel very sad about that because I love being around children.

JJ: Tell us about your Jewish background.
MP: I grew up thinking I was French-Hugenot and Russian Catholic on my father’s side and Italian and English on my mother’s. I found out in my 20s that my father was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants and last year, after my mother died, I found out she was not the daughter of an Italian opera singing mother and English parson father as she said, but Hungarian Jewish immigrants. Her father was an out-of-work Orthodox rabbi. So first I was not Jewish, then I was half-Jewish and now I’m 100% Jewish. My parents were so insistently “not Jewish” that they forced me, the most stereotypically-looking Jew in the family, to have a nose job when I was 13. Finding out I’m Jewish is like finding out you are what you always knew you were. I’m much less confused as a result.

JJ: Do you think Jewish mother/daughter relationships are particularly complex?
MP: I guess I feel if you throw in several centuries of racial or cultural oppression, along with the ongoing oppression of women, the mother-daughter relationship will suffer exponentially. We generally like to think people draw closer when there is trouble, but in my experience, people fight more when they’re stressed out.

JJ: In your opinion, are father/son relationships as intricate?
MP: No, because men are allowed to individuate and become fully formed people, apart from their fathers. Women have no myth of matricide, no message that it is good and right to become your own person, separate from your mother. We learn that we will betray our mothers if we leave or grow beyond them.

JJ: How has the book been selling?
MP: Very well. It seems to be hitting a nerve, with readers buying copies not just for themselves, but also for their mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, co-workers — anyone they know who has a difficult relationship with their mother. Seems pretty universal!

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Editorial

Catholics and Jews: Different Strategies for Closings

Our hearts go out to our Catholic friends and neighbors who are losing their parishes. The Archdiocese of Boston — still reeling from the sex-abuse scandal that has cost it thousands of parishioners and millions of dollars — is closing 65 parishes in an economy move, including a dozen in the area north of Boston served by the Journal.

The parishes in question are a varied lot. They meet no single set of criteria: Some are in dire need of repair, some are losing parishioners, some are expensive to maintain, some are below par in the tally of weddings, baptisms, funerals and other indicators of active involvement. But some have no significant negatives and are being closed anyway. There is a shortage of priests and a surfeit of parishes for the number of active parishioners. Millions of dollars can be saved by consolidation.

To be sure, there is an appeal process, but there is little prospect of saving those parishes slated for closing. Many long-time parishioners in the doomed churches — congregants in our own terminology — feel betrayed and resentful.

We do things differently in the American Jewish tradition. As Brandeis Professor Jonathan D. Sarna noted in his Jewish Journal lecture at the Jewish Community Center in Marblehead May 23, if Jews don’t like the congregation they’re in, they have traditionally voted with their feet: They opened a rival congregation across town. And if the one they start turns out not to be financially viable, they close it down or merge it with another congregation.

Two Malden congregations, both with aging, declining memberships, joined forces last year. And this year two area mergers are in the offing: Temples Israel and Beth El in Swampscott will vote June 27 whether to consummate a union; and in the Merrimack Valley, Temples Tifereth Israel in Andover and Beth El in Lowell are also negotiating toward a joint future.

The Catholic tradition is centralized, hierarchical and top-down. The Jewish tradition is — decentralized, participative and bottom-up. Process determines outcome in both cases. Not all Jews like the outcome when their congregations merge, but they have the satisfaction of knowing, usually, that they have been part of the process.

That’s a solace not available to Catholics feeling the pain of losing their local parish.

— Mark R. Arnold

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Local Columnists

Rememberance and War

DOV BURT LEVY Jewish Journal North of Boston Dov Burt Levy is a Salem, MA based columnist. He can be reached at dblevy@columnist. com..

The recent Memorial Day weekend will be long remembered as the symbolic time when the United States changed from one method of warfare to another.

Why? That weekend, the World War II Memorial opened, officially memorializing a war effort that began in 1941 and changed the world. Also that weekend, the United States war effort against a new enemy continued to go poorly, and fundamental changes in strategy, tactics, and equipment must be forthcoming.

First, at the Memorial ceremony, long overdue, short well-done speeches said enough to provoke tears and pride, thanks and recognition.

Over 16 million Americans served in uniform between 1941 and 1945 and provided a great human and technological effort in a just war.

Guns, field armor, airplanes of many types, ships, and atomic weapons were developed and used to win an unconditional victory.
What is happening in Iraq shows the West fighting a war so different from World War II that historians will one day compare it with the change between the battlefields, tactics and equipment of the opposing armies of the Civil War, as compared with World War II.

Today’s enemies are individuals, cells and small groups very much undercover. The battlegrounds are cities filled with civilians of the enemy’s nationality or enemy cities like New York or Madrid or Riyadh filled, as they put it, with infidels.

The weapons are homemade explosives left in cars next to buildings or on roads traveled by those they wish to kill.

This new style guerilla war has cost the lives of 1000 American soldiers in Iraq. Saudi Arabia is again under heavy attack by terrorists seeking to rule one of the West’s principal oil suppliers.

The enemy imbeds itself into the civilian populations using schools, mosques, and ambulances as hiding places or means of transportation. Some of the enemy become human bombs; others relish the decapitation of live captives.

That we are not doing well is an understatement. We intended to stay as long as necessary to change Iraq from Sadam Hussein’s bloody dictatorship to a democratic state. Now we give authority back on June 30 to a council that makes no promises to fulfill our goals and has, some say, little chance of any success.

We vowed to retake Falusha and capture the enemy to avenge the deaths and public decapitation of four Americans. Three weeks later, we were reduced to making a deal with a “wanted” Moslem cleric. Two days later they ignored the agreement and killed two more American soldiers.

How do we fight this new war against a new enemy on either a battleground like Iraq or in the United States where terrorists vow to strike again?

Neither the Bush administration statements, nor the Kerry political speeches, inspire confidence.
Nor do the extreme answers that I have heard from average citizens where one side says: “Pack up and get out. If the Iraqis want a murderous tyrant, that’s what they’ll get.”

The other side says: “Bomb the enemy. Give innocent Iraqi civilians time to get out and then kill everybody left.”
Somewhere there is an answer, or at least a plan with reasonable chance of success better than those two impossible extremes. But who and how and when are the questions.

General Anthony Zinni, the latest Bush team critic, said in his book Battleground: “I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption.” That war team is unlikely to develop a new strategy contradicting past policies.
If what we have gotten to date from the Kerry team is all they have to say, I hear nothing new.

On Memorial Day 2004, like 1941, we were in serious trouble. No doubt, like 1945, we will prevail.

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Bride Marries Bride: In Search of the Gender-Neutral Ketubah

My cousin Lori was trying to explain gay marriage to her curious five-year-old twins.

“You see,” she told Brady and Jake, “It used to be the law that mommies could only marry daddies. And daddies could only marry mommies.”

Brady and Jake seemed puzzled, but Lori persisted. “But then,” she said, “they realized that was a silly law. So they changed it. Now Mommies can marry mommies and daddies can marry daddies.” Lori gave them a few seconds for this information to sink in.
Though the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had legalized gay marriage the preceding week, it was a strange and new concept for many people, not just her five-year-olds.

And yet, it was important that Brady and Jake master that concept, because a few days later they would be the ring bearers at their mommies’ wedding.

I began getting used to the concept when another of my cousins called me and asked if I had seen the Sunday Boston Globe.
“Not yet, Phil. Still making coffee,” I answered. “Get the paper,” he instructed me. “Why?” I asked. “Something important?” “Just get the paper. I’ll hang on,” he said. “What should I be looking for? And what page?” “Just get the paper,” he said. This was getting interesting.
I went to the front door and slid the thick Sunday newspaper out of its plastic sheath. Aha!

“Wow, Phil…wow!” There on page one, above the fold, was a huge color picture of Lori’s partner, Sara, selecting a wedding dress at Filene’s Basement. And with her was one of their twins.

I dialed Lori immediately. “You’re getting married and you didn’t invite me? Why didn’t you tell me you were going to be in the paper?” I continued to be flabbergasted as Lori related the story of how she and Sara had come to be the poster children for gay marriage, including the frustrating trip to the Jewish book store where they sought out a ketubah that didn’t mention the word “groom.”

“The reporter followed us around for 48 hours. She was so into our lives, I began calling her gumshoe,” Lori narrated. And yes, of course, I was invited.

Despite my commitment to my cousin and her partner, I wasn’t sure what to expect, or how I would feel at such a strange, new experience. Even more than what I felt, I wondered how my hyper-conventional mother and her 80-year-old brother were going to handle this wedding. I had been brought up with my mom’s Victorian notions of femininity and conformity. She was shocked when I wanted to wear sneakers to school.

There couldn’t have been anyone happier than my Uncle Melvin at Lori and Sara’s wedding. There were two brides. There was a rabbi, a chuppah, and a loving circle of family and friends. Even the reporter was there. And when the brides each broke their glasses (the challenge was that both women were wearing high heels) and kissed, my mother was the first to yell, “Mazel Tov!”

I know we all just witnessed a historic and groundbreaking event. I know we have all stepped out into a future that the other 49 states have yet to legitimate. And yet I am shocked at how normal and ordinary this world is. Lori and Sara are just two people in love, working shoulder to shoulder to raise a family, walk the dog, get to work, pay the rent. And, thankfully, they now have acquired some of the legal protections that will help them to do that.

The boys did a great job as ring bearers. And Jake absorbed the two mommy marriage concept effortlessly. But Brady was upset.
“Oh, no,” Brady muttered, thinking the new law would restrict his choices. “I wanted to marry a girl when I grow up.

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Experiencing Stage Fright at the Temple of My Youth

My mother’s Temple Sisterhood recently invited me to speak at their upcoming spring luncheon. Seems like my gig in the Jewish Journal of the North Shore has made me a bit of a celebrity back in my little neighborhood.

I am both tickled and terrified at the prospect of speaking in front of the group. Now if you’re one of those supremely confident crowd pleasers, I’d suggest you read another article. But for us folks who view public speaking with the same enthusiasm as getting a cavity filled with a Sears power drill, an assignment of this nature is of great concern.

What am I afraid of? I haven’t the slightest clue. This isn’t an interview with Oprah or Diane Sawyer. It is a presentation in front of a handful of sweet ladies. Do I think they will laugh at me? Pitch their sponge cake at my face? It is as if I had morphed into a self-doubting teenager looking into a mirror of doubt.

I compose myself, craft my “sermon,” calm myself down with an iced latte and hit the road. What awaits me is the long-forgotten lesson of my childhood. Even if you really can’t read Hebrew, you can discover something quite magical in a Temple if you look in the right places or the right faces.

I peruse the room, see no cameras or news crews and feel a little more at ease. This is the place that I marched around with flags at Simchat Torah, celebrated my Bat Mitzvah and braided the threads of my father’s tallis. It feels very safe.

The women at my table chat with me. One shares with me that in her youth she looked like Rita Hayworth and had written Rita a letter asking if she could borrow a gown from one of her movies for her junior prom. I think she was still a little hurt that Rita hadn’t mailed the dress. Another woman remembers me as the little girl with glasses which catapults me back to a time of extreme embarrassment, but I quickly regroup and make my way to the podium.

A couple of women shout for me to slow down and speak up, but overall I manage to get into the groove, sharing random thoughts and reading a couple of my articles I think they will like. The audience seems pleased. They eat up the slices of my life like a big piece of sponge cake with strawberries. Voila, it is over. I exhale, take a deep breath and return to my place next to Rita Hayworth.

I am instantly enveloped in a sea of compliments. They think I am so young and pretty that I consider sending for my belongings and taking up permanent residence. One woman tells me that she thinks I am so full of love that I made her cry.

I run to the ladies’ room recalling the many trips I made as a girl during services. I have traveled full circle to remind myself how wonderful it feels to be cherished by a group of sweet Jewish ladies.

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Opinion

Combatting the New Post-Modern Anti-Semitism

ROB ESHMAN Rob Eshman is editor-in-chief of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, from which this is reprinted with permission.

It’s a sad fact of modern Jewish life that more of us believe Hitler will come back before the Messiah comes at all.

Our texts and greatest prophets hold out a future of Messianic promise. But real life has taught us to drive with one or both eyes in the rearview mirror. I’d like to make a convincing case that we’re overreacting, but current events convince me otherwise.

At a time when most American Jews feel safe and secure — as they should — Jews in Europe and Israel face enormous dangers.

Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum wrote in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal several months ago that our fears are overheated, that this is not 1933. Back then, the whole world turned its back on us, there was no State of Israel, and millions of Jews lived where anti-Semites ruled. In mid-May the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) second Conference on anti-Semitism ended — in Berlin — by condemning all acts motivated by anti-Semitism or other forms of religious or racial hatred, and participating states agreed to take specific, practical countermeasures.

“Anti-Semitism is currently a tool of the powerless,” Berenbaum wrote, “not the instrument of the powerful.”

All this is, thankfully, true. But Berenbaum was not saying there is no cause for concern, just no reason for hysteria and hyperbole.
A new anthology, Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism (Random House), is powerful precisely because, unlike many of the recent books on anti-Semitism, its varied voices do not cry 1933, but parse the new “postmodern” anti-Semitism, as the book’s editor Ron Rosenbaum calls it. This is Jew-hatred in light of Jew power. It is virulent, it is dangerous, and it is fashionable. (In his pitch-perfect essay, David Mamet calls anti-Semitism, “the new black.”) With the advent of nuclear weapons and dirty bombs, it poses severe, even existential, threats, though its practitioners might only be a relative few “Islamo-facists,” as Christopher Hitchens calls them, and their amen chorus on the obsequious left and lunatic right.

Today’s anti-Semitism is, in many ways, just the same as pre-modern anti-Semitism, a visceral and “eliminationist,” form of human hatred, to use Daniel Goldhagen’s word. Anyone who doubts that could read deeper down in the stories on the American businessman Nicholas Berg, whose beheading at the hands of Arab terrorists could not possibly be separated from the fact that he was a Jew with an Israeli stamp in his passport.

But this anti-Semitism is also complex. Israeli actions can spark justifiable outrage; as London Times columnist Melanie Phillips writes, there is, “equally no doubt that anti-Zionism is now being used to cloak a terrifying nexus between genocidal Arab and Islamist hatred of the Jews and deep-seated European prejudices.”

What can we do? Two recently introduced bills in Congress deserve our support, and their authors our praise. The Global Anti-Semitism Review Act, authored by Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and introduced by Sens. Voinovich, Joseph Biden (D-Del.), George Allen (R-Va.) and Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), requires the State Department to provide a country-by-country report on anti-Semitic acts and harassment and the governmental response.

A similar bill in the House (HR 4230) would authorize the State Department to create an Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, to require inclusion in annual State Department reports of information concerning acts of anti-Semitism around the world. That bill is sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) and John Lewis (D-Ga.).
“The U.S. government has not had an international policy on anti-Semitism,” Waxman told me by phone from Washington, “and the logical place for it should be the State Department.” The State Department has an office on international religious freedom but, according to Waxman, monitors haven’t been doing a very good job pinpointing anti-Semitism.

The result is a policy at odds with itself. A 2003 State Department human rights report took the United Arab Emirates to task for suppressing free speech when it banned the screening of a vicious anti-Semitic program.

Waxman said his bill will focus bureaucratic attention on anti-Semitic content itself. Will it lead to suppression of free speech abroad, as its critics claim?

Waxman said monitors will focus on instances where anti-Semitic actions or speech have violated a nation’s own anti-incitement or anti-racism laws. The bill also calls on the government to pass a United Nations resolution denouncing anti-Semitism, and work with the OSCE to institute steps to combat it.

Neither bill replaces good-faith efforts by countries themselves to counter anti-Semitism. But they are, at least, one more clear signal that 2004 is not 1933. Thank God.

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As War News Turns Sour, Critics Point Fingers at Who Else — the Jews

JONATHAN S. TOBIN Jonathan S.Tobin is executive director of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia. He can be reached via e-mail at jtobin@jewishexponent.com

It is a rule of thumb that has been tried and tested many times over the last 2,000 years. When things go bad, blame the Jews.

So it can hardly be termed a surprise that the problems that have arisen for the United States in Iraq have led some of the conflict’s fiercest critics to trot out the same bag of tired tricks. When in doubt, they al