Jewish Journal Archives

Stan Black, Philanthropist, Dies at 68
Bob Lappin: “We have lost a truly great human being.”

Stan Black, one of the North Shore’s foremost Jewish philanthropists, and a major supporter of the Jewish Journal and other community agencies, was laid to rest in Peabody Wednesday, following a service at Temple Emanu-El in Marblehead. Black died unexpectedly Sunday, Nov. 13, at his winter home in Highland Beach, Florida. He was 68.

Black’s involvement with the North Shore Jewish community extended to virtually every agency, including the Journal, Jewish Federation, the Jewish Community Center, Cohen Hillel Academy, and many others. He was active in the Anti-Defamation League, B’nai Brith, and Triangle Inc., a vocational rehabilitation center for the handicapped in Malden. He was a member of Temple Emanu-El of Marblehead and Temple Shalom of Medford.

Black was recognized with numerous awards for his communal activities, including the Golden Shofar award
from Israel Bonds, the Humani-tarian of the Year award, from Triangle Inc., the Hero of Phil-anthropy award from the New England Society of Fundraising Executives, and the Cham-pion of Change Award from the United Way.

A major supporter of Jewish life on the North Shore, those who knew Black say his contributions went far beyond the financial.

“Stan was the best,” said Robert Lappin, fellow philanthropist and trustee of the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation. “In terms of the community, he is not replaceable. He had no personal agenda and sought no covet. He worked only to do good, to bring people together. We have lost a truly great human being.”

“Stan understood that leadership was about vision and action,” said Federation director Merritt Mulman. “He oftentimes would write a check to support the community. That’s true. But the void will be felt in the boardroom.”

Black served as the Federation’s campaign co-chair in 2003 and 2004, a period that witnessed a 20 percent rise in fundraising. He often drew on his years of experience in business to help organizations improve their practices.
“He believed in marketing. That’s what his business was,” said Arthur Epstein, who knew Black since they were teenagers in Malden. “He had a marketing genius in him.”

Community leaders stress that Black was unique in finding creative ways to create a synergy between different arms of the community.

“It was always about how to get community agencies to work together,” said Jon Firger, executive director of Jewish Family Service. “He always was wearing a community hat and was always looking toward the greater good. It’s a huge loss for this community.”

Black’s philanthropic efforts extended well beyond the Jewish community. He was a board member for nearly 35 years of Triangle Inc., an organization which offers mentally challenged individuals the opportunity to perform work for local businesses. Black became involved with Triangle when his company, Wade Button, began subcontracting work to the organization’s clients. Those who accompanied Black to Triangle’s workshop in Malden say that all the clients knew him and would call his name as he passed.

Dr. Phil Conti, Triangle’s Vice-President, remembers Black in much the same way as the North Shore community. Conti would frequently pick up his phone to hear Black’s voice asking if the organization was having financial troubles. “If we did, Stan would write a check,” said Conti. “I don’t know how many times he did that. I have known many generous people in my life. I can’t think of any more generous than Stan.”

“I think it was Elie Wiesel who said the mission of the Jew is not to make the world more Jewish but to make it more human — that really epitomizes Stan,” said Neil Cooper, a former Federation director and another of Black’s childhood friends from Malden. “Nothing that he did was for his own ego.”

Black’s modesty, and his refusal to seek public acclaim for his achievements, were traits emphasized over and over by those who knew him.

The Jewish Journal’s former editor-publisher Mark Arnold, who frequently consulted with Black, said he steadfastly refused to allow the Journal to recognize him for his efforts. “We wanted to honor him at a dinner last year and he wouldn’t think of it,” said Arnold. “He just did this because he felt it was a worthwhile cause.”

“I can’t imagine anyone whose presence will be more missed than Stanley Black,” Arnold added.

“Stan Black was a true friend of the Jewish Journal,” said the newspaper’s president, Gerald Perlow. “He fulfilled the theme of hineni in every way, shape and manner.”

Stanley Daniels Black was born in Malden on April 17, 1937, the second of three children. His father Arthur, an attorney, passed away when he was 15, and Black dropped out of high school soon thereafter to go to work.

He started out in business selling everything from toothpaste to office supplies.

In 1981, he started Trim Lines, a mail order business that included the Woodworkers Warehouse catalog. In 1986, the company began opening retail outlets.

Black later moved to Swampscott, where he was often referred to as one of the Malden ‘crew’, a group who had grown up together and relocated to other North Shore communities as adults.

Black is survived by his wife of 47 years Emelia (Emy), sister Ruth Colangelo of Melrose, daughters Jessica Black and Arlyne Campbell, sons-in-law James Odorczuk and Richard Campbell, and four grandchildren: Jayla, Robert, Spencer and Trevor. The family asks that contributions in Black’s memory be made to the organization of the donor’s choice.
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“See my works, how fine and excellent they are! All that I created, I created for you. Reflect on this, and do not corrupt or desolate my world; for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you.”

Attend a rally on global warning or a seminar linking environmental pollutants to breast cancer, and a curious phenomenon becomes apparent: many of the participants are Jewish.

Although no hard numbers exist, Jews seem to participate in environmental causes in higher proportion than the rest of the population. The question is, why?

Rabbis and other Jewish scholars suggest it may be because caring for creation is a tradition emphasized in the Torah and Talmud — beginning with the commandment in Genesis that Adam and Eve protect the Garden of Eden.

“The concept of God creating the universe is at the fundamental core of Judaism,” says Rabbi Lawrence Troster, the Rabbinic Fellow of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life. Founded in 1993, COEJL is the leading Jewish environmental organization in the nation.

“We do not own creation, we are part of it,” says Troster, who frequently lectures on theology, environmentalism and bio-ethics. He points out that many mitzvot instruct us to protect the planet and live sustainably, perhaps the most obvious example being the Sabbath. For one day out of seven, we limit our use of resources — we walk to synagogue, we do not use fuel to cook, and we do not shop.

Other Judaic tenets speak to the same obligation. Bal tashchit (do not waste) teaches us to conserve resources. Shiluach ha-keyn (chasing away the mother bird) teaches us to safeguard all species. And shmita (sabbatical year) teaches us the importance of ecological sustainability.

“When we consider the state of the environment today in light of these mitzvot and values, it is clear that we have an urgent Jewish mission,” says Troster.

Rabbi Lee Levin of Temple Shalom in Salem agrees. At a recent global warming seminar presented by the local environmental group HealthLink, Levin remarked, “Being a good Jew involves being a good Earthling.”

Levin points out that Jews give daily thanks for the gift of creation in a blessing recited before the Shema. “In it we find the words uv’tuvoh mechadesh be’chol yom tamid ma’aseh bereishit, or, ‘In Your goodness, day after day You renew Creation,’” says Levin. “These words express the idea that creation is an ongoing process that is renewed daily, and in which we participate.”

He also points out that many Jewish holidays reinforce environmental ideals. On Sukkot, for example, we ritualistically combine four species together (a fruit and a palm, myrtle and willow branch), and sing psalms of Thanksgiving.

Levin cites several possible reasons why Jews dedicate themselves to environmental and social causes. “Three essential ingredients of Jewish thought have made Jews more likely to pursue various forms of social activism,” he says. “The belief that change for the better is possible; the belief that we, as partners in creation, are charged with improving the world; and the relative emphasis placed upon conduct over doctrine, or deed over creed.”

Susan Yochelson, a Jewish environmentalist from Salem, mentions the concept of Tikkun Olam as inspiration for her activism.

“Tikkun Olam, or the healing of the world, is a concept we have all grown up with,” she says. “One way to help others is to make sure we take care of the world.”

As a member of HealthLink and Salem Alliance for the Environment, Yochelson, who has a background in community organizing, social work and human services, has devoted many volunteer hours to working on clean air and water initiatives.

Janna Cohen Rosenthal, a 25 year-old activist living in Jamaica Plain, is also motivated by Tikkun Olam. She believes her Jewish upbringing had a big influence on her becoming an activist. “My parents helped start a shul in Baltimore that had social action and Tikkun Olam as core tenets. Environmentalism is a very literal approach to Tikkun Olam.”

Cohen Rosenthal currently works for the Mass Energy Consumers Alliance, a non-profit committed to making energy more affordable and environmentally sustainable. She lectures about New England GreenStart, a program where consumers pay a little more for clean energy, but the payments are double-matched and used to develop renewable energy projects.

“I am really interested in speaking with community groups like synagogues about this exciting program,” she says. “Synagogues could become a model of energy efficiency. And who doesn’t like giving tzedekah, especially when it more than doubles in impact?”

Cohen Rosenthal believes Jews should be at the forefront of the environmental movement.

“Jews tend to have a higher educational level, and therefore often a higher standard of living. We use more resources, and have an obligation to try and address this disparity. Although many Jewish people recognize this, we still have a ways to go,” she admits.

“Environmental and re--source issues are going to be of huge concern for Israel. On a global level,” she maintains, “we all need to decrease our dependence on foreign oil.”

Jane Klein Bright is a local activist involved with HealthLink and the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, among other organizations. She believes Jewish institutions could pledge a greater commitment to the environment and become leaders in ‘going green’.

Lynn Nadeau of Marblehead has been a dedicated environmental activist since the 1970s, founding HealthLink in her living room in 1998. The watchdog group has fearlessly taken on numerous environmental Goliaths, most notably the local power plant in Salem Harbor.

After years of work by Nadeau, Bright and others, HealthLink got the power plant to cut down on emissions and comply with clean air regulations.

“Why would a Jew care about our environment?” asks Nadeau. “Because we take responsibility for bringing justice into the world, and we take an active role in creating Eden again. Our perspective comes from Hillel who said, ‘If we are told the Messiah is coming while we are planting a tree, we should first finish planting that tree.’”

HealthLink has received several substantial grants and is now focusing its efforts on promoting renewable energy sources such as wind power.

Lori Ehrlich is a formerly apolitical Marblehead mother who got involved with HealthLink and the Wenham Lake Watershed Association when pollution threatened the health of her own family (see related story below). She believes Jews are motivated by compassion, which causes them to volunteer for causes.

“At the core of Judaism, there’s a deep concern and compassion for community,” says Ehrlich. “I personally learned about this at a very young age at Jewish camp and through my temple youth group. It’s something I’m teaching my children as well,” she says.

Dr. Lawrence Block, a cardiologist who has served on the Swampscott Board of Health for three years, interprets the Jewish commandment to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’in both a literal and global manner.

He has alerted Swampscott residents about the dangers of inhaling lead dust when scraping outdoor house paint, and has banned the practice. He crusaded for legislation prohibiting the town from applying commercial pesticides to public school grounds and playing fields. Under his leadership, the Swampscott Board of Health was the first on the North Shore to ban smoking in the workplace, and the first in Massachusetts to require posted warnings about the danger of mercury in certain types of fish.

Block feels very strongly about organic pest management (see related story), and this summer stood up to the town administrator and refused to authorize wide-scale spraying to eradicate mosquitoes that might harbor the West Nile virus.

Block is chairing a newly formed Renewable Energy Committee to explore environmentally friendly ways to power Swampscott. He is particularly interested in wind towers.

“They could save the town a significant amount of money,” predicts Block, who admits that Americans have been slow in accepting the wind agenda. He will present his findings to the town next spring.

Whether it’s advocating wind power or cleaning up local lakes, hard-working Jewish activists like Lawrence Block, Lori Ehrlich, Lynn Nadeau and Janna Cohen Rosenthal can be found on the frontlines, working to make the environment safer for all God’s creatures.

The grass in front of Dr. Lawrence Block’s Swamp-scott home is lush and green, and he mows it with a silent electric mower that doesn’t require fossil fuels. Block is a vocal advocate of organic lawn care who is concerned that far too many homeowners treat their lawns with chemicals that pollute community groundwater and pose a serious risk to children and pets.

Block maintains that many pesticides and herbicides used on lawns are carcinogenic and particularly dangerous to children who play on lawns and may inadvertently put their hands in their mouths.

“The fact that these products are registered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does not mean they are safe. In fact the EPA has stated that all pesticides are toxic to some degree,” says Block.

As Chairman of the Swamp-scott Board of Health, he spearheaded regulations that prohibit the town from applying pesticides on public playing fields and school grounds. He recommends that individual homeowners do the same — for their own health, as well as that of the community.

“Stop using pesticides on your own lawn. If you hire commercial landscapers to maintain your lawn, require them to use organic techniques,” he urges.

Block offers the following organic lawn care tips:
• Aerate the soil annually.
• Water the lawn infrequently but deeply.
• Mow the grass high to allow roots to grow bigger.
• Use organic fertilizer such as compost once or twice per season.
• Control weeds by spreading corn gluten in April.
• Control grubs by spreading non-toxic milky spores on the lawn three times per season for two seasons. This will control the pests naturally for up to a decade.

Lori Ehrlich had an environmental epiphany in the summer of 1998. “My girls Jamie and Casey were playing on our Marblehead deck,” she recalls. “When they ran into the kitchen, they tracked black footprints all over my white tile floor. Upon examining the deck, my husband Bruce discovered that everything was covered with a thin layer of black soot.”

Thinking the pollution might have come from the nearby Salem power plant, then owned by PG&E, Ehrlich called the company, which dispatched an adjuster to take samples for analysis. Although the company was unwilling to share the laboratory results, it offered to power wash the deck and furniture as part of its “good neighbor” policy. In exchange, Ehrlich had to release the corporation from all liability.

“That was a defining moment of clarity for me,” says Ehrlich. “I stood there holding the letter, looking down at my children, and thinking PG&E has totally missed the point. This is not about my deck or my furniture. Who is going to power wash their little lungs?”

Ehrlich, a self-employed CPA, got involved in what turned out to be a long, acrimonious battle with the power plant that ultimately kick-started a second (albeit unpaid) career as an environmental activist. Her environmental work prompted her to enroll in Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she recently graduated with a master’s degree in public administration.

Formerly apolitical, the Marblehead mother now recognizes that politics is central to the solution of public health problems. “I’ve learned the importance of phone calls and letters to elected officials,” says Ehrlich, who currently serves on the board of the Environmental Integrity Project in Washington, DC.

Although Ehrlich is in--trigued about working on the national level, she values the impact she has had on the local level. In addition to fighting the power plant, she played a significant role saving Wenham Lake, which provides drinking water for 80,000 residents of Eastern Massachusetts.

For years, runoff from a closed landfill in Beverly filtered into the once pristine lake. Although the EPA was aware of the danger, it was given a low priority. Ehrlich co-founded the Wenham Lake Watershed Association to address the issue. In December of 2000, she and other activists drilled a hole in the frozen ice and filled a clear tube with a cross section of the lake. Analysis showed that nearly six feet of arsenic-laden fly ash dumped by the power plant lay at the bottom.
Within 100 days, Ehrlich and her cohorts secured an agreement from New England Power to address the contamination. Thanks to their work, the $10 million cleanup of Wenham Lake was recently completed.

“Environmentalists are you and me,” she says. “You may not wear tie-died T-shirts or walk around hugging trees and eating tofu, but I bet you care about your kids, your grandchildren and yourself.”

The Boston Public Library in Copley Square is the temporary home of “Fighting the Fires of Hate,” a traveling exhibit documenting the burning of books by the Nazis in May 1933. The exhibit is a project of the United States Holocaust Museum and has already displayed in cities around the country.

Curated by Steve Goodell, director of exhibitions at The U.S. Holocaust Museum, and Guy Stern, a professor of German and Slavic studies at Wayne State University, the exhibit focuses on reaction to the burning in the United States where it elicited widespread condemnation. President Franklin Roosevelt denounced it in a speech and the New York Times and other papers devoted considerable space to accounts of the burning.

“What we wanted to show is that this event, intended as a symbol of German strength, of so-called German Aryan values, backfired,” says Stern. “It became, in effect, an upholding of American democratic values.”

Display panels trace the Nazi effort to suppress literature, by both Jewish and non-Jewish authors, that didn’t conform to German standards and the overwhelming condemnation that effort was met with in the United States. With film and television clips and published excerpts, the exhibit shows how book burning became a powerful symbol of the suppression of intellectual freedom, as reviled in popular culture as in the academy.

“It became a warning against … any extreme censorship in our country,” says Stern.

“In a time when we are perhaps threatened by a diminution of our civil rights,” the book burning warns against attempts to “whittle away at democratic procedures.”

The exhibit opened Nov. 7 and runs through Jan. 19, 2006. It is free and open to the public.

SALEM — With calls to unity and expressions of support for the State of Israel, Jewish and Christian leaders convened the annual Comfort My People event on Sunday, Nov. 13, at Temple Shalom in Salem.

Intended to build bridges between the Jewish and Christian communities and to solidify commitment to the State of Israel, the evening of song, dance and Biblical readings filled the sanctuary at Temple Shalom nearly to capacity and had attendees singing and dancing in the aisles.

The evening also raised $2,258 to help a hospital in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon purchase a sophisticated cardiac device, according to one of the event organizers.

The two-hour long program featured pairs of rabbis and Christian pastors reading Biblical passages, along with performances by Scott Smith and his band. Alison Shapira, from the Israeli consulate, sang the Israeli national anthem and other selections.

Rabbi Edgar Weinsberg of Congregation Shirat Hayam in Swampscott shared the podium with Pastor Anthony Giglio from the Kaleo Christian Center.

“We’re standing with God’s people,” added Giglio, who revved up the crowd with a rousing reading from Isaiah, “Can I hear one more Amen?”

Pastor Bill Adams, an evangelical leader from Albany, NY, spoke at length about the evening’s theme, describing the various ways he had attempted to comfort God’s people.

“God wants us to understand each other and bring this message of hope to the world,” said Adams.

Turning to the Jews in the audience, he continued, “You’ve got friends. The circle is widening. We are offering ourselves as a people to comfort you.”

Approximately 900 students from 15 local high schools packed the auditorium at Salem High School Nov. 3 to hear the real-life sagas of three survivors of genocide. The annual Human Rights Awareness Day event was sponsored by The Holocaust Center Boston North.

“Each of these speakers was your age or younger when they experienced genocide,” Center director Harriet Wacks told the students. “Although they endured horrible atrocities, they survived to tell their tales. You have the unique opportunity to learn history directly from those who experienced it.” Sayon Soeun of Cambodia spoke first. The boyish-looking Soeun, 38, is a survivor of the Cambodian genocide of the late 1970s, when an estimated 1.8 million Cambodians died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime led by Communist dictator Pol Pot.

Soeun, who doesn’t remember his given name or birth date, was born in a rural village. Around the age of five, he was separated from his family — whom he never saw again — and forced to become a child soldier. The frightened, uneducated youth was tortured and starved by his oppressors.

In 1979, the 11-year-old escaped and walked from Cambodia into Thailand, a journey that took almost a year. After spending time in refugee camps where he witnessed repeated rapes and robberies, he was adopted by a Christian family in Connecticut.

America proved another challenge. Although he had food and shelter, his adoptive father was alcoholic and abusive. Soeun barely spoke English, and often got into trouble.

Soeun, who now lives in Lowell, works with at-risk youth. “I work to make their lives better, since mine was so hard. But don’t have sympathy for me” he said to teens clearly affected by his presentation. “Have sympathy for the millions who didn’t make it.”

Ernest Rugwizangonga spoke next. The 30 year-old was born in a suburb of the Rwandan capital. Members of the Tutsi minority, Rugwizangona’s family enjoyed good relations with their Hutu neighbors.

In 1990, Hutu rebels began persecuting Tutsis, and by 1994, a full-scale civil war broke out. When his house was torched, the teenage Rugwizangonga ran away to escape the violence

Rugwizangonga paid bribes to get to a refugee camp where a priest hid him in a ceiling for three months. An estimated 800,000 citizens died in the Rwandan genocide, including three of Rugwizangonga’s siblings.

In 1987, he secured a student visa and came to America, where he has lived ever since. He returned to Rwanda in 2002 and found it traumatizing.

“The ruins of my house are still there; the killers are still there. The message from the government is that you have to move on, but people live the history, and it’s not going to go away,” says Rugwizangonga, who dreams of creating a healing center in his hometown.

Rena Finder spoke last. “Although my story is more than 60 years old, it is still very relevant today,” began Finder, who survived the Nazi holocaust.

Finder was born in Krakow. When Hitler invaded Poland, she and her family were forced into a ghetto, then transferred to a work camp. As life grew increasingly oppressive for European Jews, Finder was amazed that no one intervened. “Trains were crisscrossing Europe, bringing millions of Jews to their deaths. The world stood silently while we were being murdered,” she says.

Oskar Schindler was a rare exception. Finder and her mother were lucky to get on his famous list, and he looked after them. Eventually, however, the pair was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

“We arrived around midnight. I jumped down from the boxcar, and I thought it was snowing. In actuality, it was ashes in the air from people who were burning,” she says.

After three weeks at Auschwitz, Schindler bribed guards with diamonds to secure the release of 300 Jews, including Finder and her mother. In 1948, she moved to the United States.

“If it wasn’t for Schindler, I wouldn’t be here,” claims Finder. “He made me an eyewitness so I can share my story with you. Don’t be a bystander when you hear about injustice. Get involved.”

“Today is simply an introduction,” concluded Wacks. “Do your own research on these and other genocides. Learn from the past to understand the present so there will be a future.”

Sarah Silverman is more offended by jokes about fat people than the Holocaust. It’s not that the Holocaust itself is funny, she explains. But for Silverman, a comedian with seemingly few topics too tender to touch, the subject of weight hits a little too close to home.

“I’ve heard fat jokes that are really funny,” she says. “But jokes about fat women or fat jokes about women bum me out, because no matter how evolved you are … if you’re a woman, you still are terrified of getting fat. You know why? Because fat women don’t deserve love. And everyone wants to be loved.”

It’s late on a November after-noon and Silverman is sitting on a sofa in a Boston hotel dressed in blue sweatpants and black suede sneakers with stripes. It was the day after her new film, “Jesus is Magic,” premiered before a sold-out audience at the Boston Jewish Film Festival and Silverman seemed bored, making faces at passing children and shifting constantly in an overstuffed chair.

At 34, Silverman has been in show business for more than a decade, commanding a cult following for bit parts in “School of Rock” and the television show “Mr. Show,” but by the looks of it, her career is about to explode. She has gotten a ton of press lately, including a profile in a recent issue of the New Yorker. She also appears on the cover of the latest issue of the Jewish hipster magazine Heeb. In the photo she is clad in lingerie, seductively wielding a pair of scissors and holding up a bed sheet, a spoof on the joke that Orthodox Jews make love through a hole.

For Silverman, such antics are par for the course. To call her shocking is an understatement. Her routines violate every conceivable taboo — fat women excepted — cracking jokes about starving Africans, pregnant black teenagers, Jews, Asians, lesbians, and on and on. For her liberal use of obscenities and her onstage daring she is frequently likened to Lenny Bruce, the foul-mouthed comic who played up his borsht-belt credentials for laughs while making a point of aggravating bourgeois sensibilities with jokes about Hitler and Jesus Christ.

Not surprisingly, she has caught a fair amount of flak from minority groups who find her humor offensive in the extreme. An Asian-American advocacy group condemned Silverman a few years ago after she used the word “chink” in a joke on the Conan O’Brien show. But no matter how outraged her critics become, Silverman responds the only way she knows how — with more jokes.

“The president of an Asian-American watchdog group out here in Los Angeles, his name is Guy Aoki, and he was up in arms about [the ‘chink’ remark] and he put my name in the papers calling me a racist, and it hurt,” Silverman says in “Jesus is Magic,” a concert film spliced with comedy sketches. “As a Jew — as a member of the Jewish community — I was really concerned that we were losing control of the media.”

Lest you think that Silverman is unconcerned about racism, let it be said that anything that might be perceived as a slur must satisfy a pretty hefty standard to find its way into her routine: it has to be funny.

“Anything that isn’t, in my opinion, -funnier than it is offensive,” is Silverman’s benchmark for acceptable humor.

One person who doesn’t find Silverman funny is Joe Franklin, one of 100 comedians featured in “The Aristocrats,” a documentary about the “dirtiest joke of all time,” an improvised bit about a family comedy troupe with a bawdy act. By many accounts, Silverman stole the show with her mock accusation that Franklin raped her. Franklin is reported to be considering a lawsuit for defamation of character.

To some extent, it is Silverman’s gender that makes palatable her racy brand of comedy and has won her more fans than she has detractors. She has the look of a classic Jewish girl next door: angelic porcelain face framed by shiny black locks and fixed with a look of Who-me? befuddlement. When juxtaposed with the tawdry stream of profanities that routinely pour from her lips, the appearance of sweet innocence is disarming, and exceedingly effective.

Her cluelessness endears audiences more than it offends them, judging at least from the uproarious reception given to “Jesus is Magic” at the festival. That is, until Silverman came to the subject of the Holocaust. When she started in with a joke about the numbered tattoos of concentration camp inmates, a noticeable pall fell over the crowd that until then had laughed easily at jokes about starving African children and porn stars.

“It’s a Jewish festival, people get sensitive,” she says. “They laugh their ass off about other hardships that don’t directly involve them. It’s human nature. I don’t mind it making them sad or them not enjoying it. It’s okay.”

The Holocaust bit may not have gotten many laughs, but it didn’t drive the audiences to the exits either. Still, the film is not for everyone. (“It’s very off-color,” she warns.)

In a Q&A following the screening, several questioners suggested there is a redeeming quality to Silverman’s work — that underneath all that lewdness was an important social commentary.

“It’s great if they do that, but I really kinda refuse to take credit for it,” she says. “I’m going for the laugh more than anything else. I’m writing about what I’m interested in, and what I’m interested in are things that are taboo and the elephants in the room. I don’t understand why everyone isn’t interested in that. I think in a way they are.”

With Silverman making a living out of pushing people’s buttons, it’s unlikely the racism issue is going away.

If anything she says can be taken seriously — and that’s a big if — that doesn’t bother her at all.

“I don’t care if you think I’m a racist,” she says in the film. “Just as long as you think I’m thin.”

This delightful hardcover book, written for children ages 4-8, follows a year in the life of a young Jewish girl. For her seventh birthday, Ruthie receives a candlestick and a box of candles from her beloved Grandma Gussie. The box contains enough candles to celebrate all the Shabbats and Jewish holidays in one year.

When the story begins, Ruthie resents Mr. Adler, a neighbor who wants to spend time with Grandma Gussie — time that used to be reserved for Ruthie. As the candles burn and the year progresses, Ruthie comes to accept and eventually embrace Mr. Adler. Information about Jewish rituals is expertly woven into this heartwarming tale, which was written by Laurie Jacobs, a Swampscott author and member of the Jewish Journal’s Board of Overseers. The beautifully illustrated book has come out just in time to make a lovely and meaningful Chanukah present for the children in your life.

I Refused To Die:
Stories of Boston-Area Holocaust Survivors and Soldiers Who Liberated the Concentration Camps of World War II
Susie Davidson
Ibbetson Street Press, 2005 417 pages, $9

Susie Davidson is a Brookline-based poet and journalist who grew up in Randolph. For this book, which took three years to publish, Davidson interviewed as many local Holocaust survivors and liberators as she could find. Most were referred to her by word of mouth.

The work, which Davidson hopes will eventually become a middle school textbook, contains the personal stories, poems, photographs and drawings from well-known survivors, such as Sonia Weitz and Samuel Bak, to others who publicly share their stories for the first time.

Davidson says she wrote the book “to document and honor the bravery of the survivors and liberators, and to confront Holocaust denial.” She is doing a series of readings in the area to raise awareness of the issue. The well-intentioned book is a bit rambling and disjointed, but it contains extensive resources and is an important contribution to not only Holocaust history, but also to local history.

Don’t let the glittery cover and silly title (which guarantees that it will wind up in a Barnes & Noble bargain bin six months from now) prevent you from reading this book. Author Jill Soloway, an Emmy-nominated writer and co-executive producer on HBOs hit show “Six Feet Under,” shares her sharp and often hilarious observations on everything from summer camp, to why women in Los Angeles wear such huge diamond rings (and what they must do to get them.)

In a bawdy, unabashed style, she shares frank details about her own life including losing her virginity and the horror of pledging a sorority. She admits that being Jewish is at the core of her identity, pointing out that the word Jew, Jewish or Jewess appears in the book 1,003 times. Although some may be put off by her crass, feminist ravings, they are as astute as they are outrageous.

It’s Not My Fault!
Can a Rabbi’s Son Find Happiness As a Tennis Pro?
Dan Waintrup
Acanthus Publishing, 2005 229 pages, $19.95

Brookline resident Dan Waintrup is a former top-ranked college tennis player who taught the sport to Jewish men and women at a prestigious New England country club. He is now in his late forties and working for a New York-based investment firm. In this lightweight memoir, he takes shots at his pampered former students, and offers a backhanded look at life as the child of a respected rabbi who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps.

A Girl’s Pocket Guide to Trouser Trout
Gail Rubin
1stBooks, 2004
145 pages, $15.50

Although women are schooled that “there are plenty of fish in the sea,” author Gail Rubin points out that some are worth hooking up with, while others should be tossed back. In this tongue and cheek reflection that compares dating to fly-fishing, Rubin teaches women about how to land a good catch. She also covers prospects for angling in the later years, what to do when the fishing hole runs dry, and, like all good fisherman, shares some tall tales of fish landed and/or lost.

For a brief period, my seventh grade Hebrew teachers rewarded good students with rabbi trading cards. My first and only reward bore a portrait of Rashi with a frizzy white beard and weepy eyes. In my 12-year-old mind, the Rashi card couldn’t compare to my Roger Clemens or Dwight Gooden.

The baseball players symbolized strength, prowess and the ability to win. The rabbi symbolized what exactly? Old age?

Though I now admire our bookish sages, back then I was looking for a brawnier hero. Our history is rife with defeat and being bullied around, and therefore like many Jews I latched onto role models who effused physical strength.

We have our biblical warriors, our Six-Day War soldiers, and our homegrown mobsters. But heroic toughs have a way of tarnishing, in ways rabbis don’t. They become brutes.

In “Blood Relation,” journalist Eric Konigsberg, uncovers a family secret: his upstanding grandfather’s brother was Harold Konigsberg, one most murderous and enticing mobsters on the East Coast.

Jewish gangsters of the first half of the 20th century weren’t just mafia accountants, they were hitmen, thugs and bosses. Their attitudes said, ‘Don’t mess with us,’ and for a generation of striving Jewish immigrants who felt like prey to a Gentile world, ‘Don’t mess with us’ was a siren’s call.

Harold, affectionately known in the family as Heshy, and in the mob as Kayo (as in K.O.), spent most of his life in prison, and is still there as a septuagenarian. But in his day, he was a force to be reckoned with.

Konigsberg recounts proudly how he was wanted by J. Edgar Hoover and feared across the East Coast.

However, in order to heroize a mobster, one must be willing to overlook his atrocities. Jewish mobsters didn’t just carry guns, they used them.

Likewise, Harold murdered at least 20 people as a mob enforcer, and loan sharked across New York and New Jersey.

In this rich account, Konigsberg thoroughly explores the perplexing personality of his granduncle. He keeps coming at his subject from different angles, from the perspective of the family who shunned Harold, from the perspective of the FBI who courted him, from court transcripts where he served as his own riotous defense lawyer, from interviews with families of his victims, from sessions with Harold himself, and finally from Konisberg’s own fraught identification with the man.

Because of the montage, we are treated to a complex portrait of someone both monster and charmer. From afar Harold may inspire hero worship, but up close he screams psychopath. Konigsberg’s attraction-repulsion is the paradox on this which powerful account stands.

While a masterful rendering, the author’s presence, judgments and feelings, front and center throughout the book are actually its weaknesses. The book’s engine is Harold and the people whose lives he damaged when he operated 50 years ago.

The story is most powerful when author Konigsberg steps back and returns to Harold’s childhood and the moment when he, a born crook, and his brother, a model Horatio Alger, part ways.

It’s most frightening when Konigsberg describes his granduncle’s doings on the night of the murder for which he was eventually convicted. It’s almost always weakest when Konigsberg refocuses on his own experiences.

However, there’s much to be praised in “Blood Relation.” The book sheds light on our relationship with our seedier Jewish past. Whether that past bears our heroes or monsters, it has the mesmerizing quality of a car accident, something rabbi cards never had.

In the space of three weeks in October, Jewish institutions on the North Shore were the targets of three acts of vandalism. At the Chabad synagogue in Swampscott, worshippers arrived on the morning of Oct. 1 to discover profanities scrawled on the walls of a multipurpose room. Two weeks later, a van was discovered torched in the Chabad parking lot, the same weekend as illegible graffiti were painted across a board at Congregation Ahabat Sholom in Lynn.

It should be readily acknowledged that none of these incidents were overtly anti-Semitic. The markings found at Chabad several weeks ago were described as “profanities.” At Ahabat Sholom, they were virtually unreadable. The Swampscott police are rightfully treating the Chabad incident as a hate crime because of the identity of the victim, not the nature of the crime.

Several individuals close to the case have suggested that it appears to be the work of kids rather than an organized hate crime, but that offers cold comfort. With police refusing comment on an active investigation, it’s nearly impossible to determine whether this belief has an evidentiary basis or is merely wishful thinking.

Here in the United States, the sense of Jewish comfort and security is perhaps greater than it has ever been, anywhere, in all of history. But travel to almost any other Jewish community in the world, and the comfort vanishes. Virtually every synagogue, school and Jewish communal institution outside North America and Israel has comparatively elaborate security measures in place, often including a guard — sometimes armed — at its entrance. In certain European precincts, the third-degree one must undergo to gain admission to a synagogue for services, often at the hands of a Hebrew-accented officer, rivals the security procedures of many airports. In London, a private Jewish security force patrols certain densely populated Jewish neighborhoods on Shabbat and holidays.

We are beyond fortunate to endure no such burdens here. Those of us born and raised in this country can scarcely imagine it being otherwise. We place our trust — and our security — in the goodwill of our neighbors and the competence of the local police departments, which in both Swampscott and Lynn have responded admirably. But occasionally, laxity exacts a price.
It is awful to consider that protecting Jewish communal institutions might require measures similar to those undertaken by our brothers and sisters overseas. The financial commitment necessary to buttress our existing precautions is considerable, but that may be the least of it. Security is the kind of thing we tend to think about only after it’s gone. Better security requires not only more money, but also surrendering some of the emotional comfort that comes with not worrying about it..

Thanksgiving Is an Opportunity To Reconsider Immigration

How sad it is, approaching Thanksgiving Day, that the nation is deeply divided over, and fighting about, immigration policy. You’d be hearing even more noise about it if issues like 9/11, Iraq, natural disasters and grand jury indictments did not exist.

What a shame. I love immigration. I love the idea, the efforts, and the effects of immigration. I admire those people – of all races, colors and religions – who came here on a great personal adventure and whose major goal was to find better opportunities for their children and grandchildren. If it all works right, immigrants get what they want and the country gets a great infusion of new genes, customs, holidays, food and spirit.

I think most Jews feel as I do about immigration. We are grateful that the borders were almost wide open between 1880 and 1918, allowing millions of our ancestors to come here from Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Conversely, we are extremely unhappy that the Roosevelt government did so little to increase immigration for Jews during the Holocaust. And we are not happy that the administration of current laws reflects confusion and incompetence. This is not where the nation should be.

When I attended college in the 1960s, a big majority of Americans favored and supported immigration. President John Kennedy had written a popular book, “A Nation of Immigrants.” Oscar Handlin, Harvard professor and dean of American immigration historians, had a best-selling book titled, “The Uprooted.”

The Anti-Defamation League was distributing millions of pamphlets called “We are all Americans” in public schools. And immigration opponents were usually found on the fringe right, in the company of other, non-mainstream factions.

Fast forward to today. The idea of immigration has become contentious. There is too much fear: Some fear loss of jobs; others fear the costs of government support to indigent immigrants; some fear the federal government has not protected the Mexican border.

Some complain that states give benefits to illegals; some complain about the widespread use of Spanish; others insist bi-lingual education is anti-American; some are undisguised racists. And since 9/11, terrorists are believed by many to be sneaking across our open borders.

Just listen to the hyperbole on talk radio. Watch Lou Dobbs on CNN and his segment called “Broken Borders.” It makes you feel like hordes of illegals are overrunning our nation.

Some facts: In 1850, the U.S. government started keeping census information about foreign-born and native-born people living in the country. “Foreign–born” includes naturalized citizens, people who are here on various work and visitor visas, and undocumented workers.

Over the years, the number of foreign-born has fluctuated between eight and fifteen percent of our population, depending on the world situation and the state of U.S. laws, which in some periods were restrictive.

Today, about 11 percent (30.1 million people) of the 270 million who live in the United States are foreign-born. In short, the U.S. is far from having its highest percentage of non- or not-yet citizens residing here; we are far from being overrun (whatever that means) by foreign-born people.

Certainly, the absorption of new immigrants costs some government money. But the future benefits of immigrant work, taxes, consumption, give good value for the money spent.

By the way, it would help if the issues of Mexican border and homeland security could be separated from questions of general immigration policies. As things stand, they confuse the issue.

Would-be terrorists and drug smugglers must be apprehended as they attempt to cross into our country. Given enough resources and willpower, this effort on the southern border can succeed. Law enforcement inadequacies there should not be allowed to skew our entire immigration policy.

If we American Jews cannot approach governmental immigration policy with a huge reservoir of goodwill, kindness and celebration, who can? Who will? And if we don’t discuss it with our families on Thanksgiving Day, when?

There’s something special about bagels that unites people. I believe a hot bagel loaded with a mountain of cream cheese can inspire even the most tight-lipped secret keeper to spill all. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been equating bagel eating with banter. Perhaps it is part of our heritage to make this familiar nosh synonymous with a long talk.

I am reminded of this notion as I stand in a mile-long line at Bagel World in Salem and people watch. I note the various clusters of folks enjoying a slice of life (or lox) over bagels and coffee. Friends giggle. Families fight. Businessmen exchange ideas. I see that someone is reading the Jewish Journal and snicker that they may be perusing my article and soon ask for my autograph, but am brought back to reality by the guy in back of me yelling, “Hey lady, it’s your turn!”

It is a weekend morning and Mitch is on a trip visiting his brother in Maryland while Rachel is away looking at a college with a friend. It’s just Emily and me and our bagels chatting like two bubbes at a bris. And I ask you, what else really is there?

We have a lot on our agenda this weekend including looking for a Bat Mitzvah dress and finding the perfect lip gloss. And I am reminded on this blissfully sunny morning of how very blessed any parent should feel to have a child who wants to share a bagel and a secret or two.

Sitting across from my daughter, who has acquired my affinity for chatting, the rest of the world fades into the background and it is crystal clear what is the only thing that matters.

Although Emily thinks the most crucial thing is that she discovers a beguiling Bat Mitzvah dress, I know that it is bagel and banter that matters most.

There is a Yiddish proverb that proclaims, “The truly rich are those who enjoy what they have.” On this particular morning, sitting in Bagel World noshing on an energy bar bagel with Emily, I feel like the wealthiest woman in the world.

If Jews have a debt to settle some day with chickens — and what is Shabbos without them? — then America has a similar score to settle with turkeys. Every November, as little schoolchildren color insipid pictures of Indians and pilgrims, and Martha Stewart presents options for cooking and plating these Native Americans, turkeys across the nation face an enormous challenge to stay calm in the face of imminent extermination.

Living in close quarters, overseen by farmers devoted to their demise, turkeys cannot help but look upon Thanksgiving the ways Jews looked at a pogrom. My family in the Ukraine would flee at the mere mention of “Christmas” or “Easter,” because on those occasions wild-eyed farmers and drunken anti-Semites would chase them with pitchforks and knives.

With their own history of persecution, you’d think Jews would be a natural for taking up the turkey cause. And yet never do you see a social action project, a food drive, or a picket line put up in defense of the big bird over whom Americans salivate every November.

And although American Jews may claim innocence because they were not present at the first Thanksgiving, they cannot dodge the truth: that a Jew, Luis de Torres, a translator who traveled with Columbus, hopped off the boat when it docked in San Salvador in 1492 and was the first to point out the meaty-chested bird, calling it “Tukki,” the Hebrew (and originally Tamil) word for peacock which he remembered from a passage in the Book of Kings (Melachim Alef 10:22).

Male turkeys “get friendly,” as the elementary school textbooks explain, by fanning their enormous feathers, much like peacocks who also strut in their mating dance. It was an easy confusion for de Torres. Indeed, turkeys are among the biggest birds found in the American forests and the most fetching prize to bag for hunters slow of wit and eye.

At the first Thanksgiving, the die was cast. Turkeys looked fabulous roasted, stuffed, and plated. Their tawny skin, seasoned and basted, touched a profound chord in the American psyche. Forever after, the turkey came to be the icon of American Thanksgiving, like the goose to the British Christmas, and the potato latke to the Jewish Chanukah celebration.

When our good friends, the Finkels, committed to spend this year in Israel, they settled in to live a life like ordinary Israelis—with one minor exception: they would have a Thanksgiving turkey. Debbie approached several grocers and butchers in Ra’anana.

“Schwarma,” they suggested. Israeli schwarma is made from turkey. But the Finkels didn’t see themselves having their Thanksgiving dinner rolled into a pita with hummus and chips.

Debbie grew relentless. Crisscrossing the city, she finally found a butcher who would order her a turkey—but not an Israeli one. He had a source in Poland who was able to come up with a whole turkey. “Why Poland?” Debbie asked. But the butcher shushed her. This was not a subject open to discussion.

At home in her Ra’anana apartment, Debbie unwrapped the turkey and took a look. When she attempted to put it in a pan and into the stove, Debbie realized that there was no way this big Polish turkey was going to fit in her miniature Israeli “easy bake” oven. “I had to hack it into twenty pieces and cook them as chunks, a few at a time,” she explained by phone.

Debbie has come to see the Thanksgiving turkey as quintessentially American and untranslatable, one of those national artifacts that does not compute in Israeli culture. The Israeli psyche has no heart for the elaborate psychodrama that Americans enact each year with their turkeys. Perhaps Jews have spent too many years on the other side of the pitchfork to watch turkeys take the business end of a fork.

Another of my friends, Shula, is going to Turkey for Thanksgiving. I find her trip a real statement of hope and solidarity with our beleaguered friends. At last they can retreat to a country of their own, an asylum to which they can be ingathered, and for which Thanksgiving need not mean an encounter with the butcher.

According to the Sages, Abraham succeeded in passing ten different tests of his faith, courage and love for God during the course of his lifetime (Avot 5:4). The most well known, of course, comes from this week’s Parsha, the awesome story of the binding of Isaac, which we read in synagogue on the morning of Rosh Hashanah. The explicit description of each of his ten trials can be found in various sources of rabbinic literature. But I believe that an eleventh such “trial” may be found later on in our same Torah portion, and like the others, it’s a test that Abraham passes with flying colors.

We read this week how the wickedness within the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah has become malignant, and so God decides to destroy the cities in order to purge their evil from the world. But for reasons the Torah does not make clear, God decides to share His intentions with Abraham, saying, “Shall I hide from Abraham that which I am about to do…?” (Genesis 18:17) When God informs Abraham of the forthcoming destruction, Abraham stands up to God with great bravery (and no small amount of chutzpah), challenging God with this most powerful response: “Will you also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Perhaps there are only fifty righteous inside the city; will you also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from You to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked…shall not the Judge of all the earth act justly?” (Genesis 18:23-25)

We don’t know for certain why God decided to inform Abraham of His intentions, but I think it was yet another trial, another test of faith. In other words, God wanted to see what Abraham would do with such information, how he would react. And by challenging the essential justice of God’s designs, by refusing to simply go quietly, to insist upon justice even in the face of evil, once again, Abraham more than passed muster.

From there, Abraham and God engage in a bargaining session worthy of the sort of open-market haggling still popular in many parts of the Middle East. God agrees to save the city should fifty righteous people be found, but Abraham again challenges God to drop the number down to forty-five. When God then allows for the cities to be spared if forty-five righteous inhabitants be found, Abraham lowers the number again to forty, and then to thirty, twenty-five, and twenty, until at last, God acquiesces to Abraham’s request that the cities will be absolved if but ten righteous be found within their gates.

In the end, even such a minyan of upright men and women could not be found, and so was sealed the cities’ fate. But one has to wonder why Abraham stopped his negotiation at ten? Why did he not continue pressing God until arriving at the number one? Should not the cities have been spared for the sake of even one righteous soul? For is it not our hope that even one good person can change the world?

Again, the Torah does not tell us. But this much we do know: the force of wickedness is strong, and can often overwhelm even those who are virtuous, compassionate and just. Can one person make a difference in the world? Absolutely. Any one person at any given moment has the ability to relieve some suffering, to love and be loved, to apprehend new truths, and to make achievements of lasting value.

But one person cannot change the world because the power of evil is simply too strong. Rather, it takes good people, working in concert together, to achieve a critical mass of goodness in order to drive hatred, violence, injustice and intolerance from the world.

And here is why Abraham ceased his negotiation with God with the request that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah be saved should but ten righteous people be found within them. And perhaps this is also why we, as Jews, traditionally worship within a community, a minyan of at least ten. For we have always understood the importance of creating a community, being part of such a critical mass of the upright, in order to link ourselves with one another in the sacred, yet challenging task of bringing greater goodness, compassion and peace to a world so desperately in need. If this be our task, our trial, our test, may we, like our patriarch Abraham, pass with flying colors.

Parshat Noah tells two stories. First, it tells the tale of Noah, the man God chooses to preserve all of the earth’s species when God decides to flood the earth and erase God’s first attempt at creation. The second is the Tower of Babel, in which humanity’s desire for power and technology reaches dangerous proportions, and God confounds language and scatters people all over the earth.

Listening to the parsha, I marveled that our nation’s leaders have justified drilling in the Arctic refuge, America’s last great wilderness. The Arctic Refuge coastal plain provides vital habitat for nearly 200 species of animals, including the 129,000 member Porcupine Caribou herd, as well as polar bears, grizzlies, wolves and millions of migratory birds.

Like Noah before us, it is our responsibility to protect creation. Drilling in the Arctic couldn’t take us farther from that goal. Drilling will destroy the refuge’s fragile ecosystem, and threaten the survival of the many endangered animals that live and breed on the Arctic coastal plain.

As a disturbing comparison, since 1996, the Prudhoe Bay oil fields and Trans-Alaska Pipeline have caused an average of 427 spills annually on the North Slope, most commonly spills of diesel and crude oil. Whether an accident or faulty maintenance, these spills are evidence of the danger oil drilling will pose. The Arctic Refuge coastal plain is one of North America’s most precious true wilderness areas. It is a place too sacred to put at risk of similar spills.

Like the builders of the tower of Babel, many proponents in Congress champion Arctic drilling for the sake of small-minded ambitions. We know that drilling in the refuge will have no discernible short-term or long-term impact on the price of fuel and will not decrease our dependence on foreign oil. The amount of oil believed to exist in the refuge would never satisfy more than two percent of our nation’s oil demands at any given time. In fact, if the refuge were America’s only source of oil, the amount of recoverable oil would sustain America’s consumption for less than 6 months.

So why do members of Congress support selling out the precious wilderness values of the Arctic Refuge coastal plain when it can only be a temporary bandage for our need for oil? Why was this controversial plan buried in the federal budget when polls consistently demonstrate that a majority of the American public opposes allowing oil drilling? Those same polls showed that an even stronger majority of Americans objects to pushing this proposal through the budget process. Like the builders of Babel, certain members of Congress work to make a name for themselves, rather than understanding their duty to work for all of us, and for all future Americans.

After the flood, God promised Noah to never again destroy the earth. What God could not promise was that we would not destroy the earth ourselves —that’s our responsibility. As humans and as Jews, we must realize that there are consequences to our actions. If we care about preserving creation for future generations, it is our moral responsibility to support real energy solutions that move this country away from our dependence on oil — and protect, not plunder, special places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The fight is not over yet. Although the Senate passed the budget with Arctic drilling included, the House of Representatives still has the power to remove Arctic drilling during the “budget reconciliation” process. I urge our local House members to vote against Arctic drilling. It’s the right thing to do.

To the Editor:
The Nov. 4 -17 issue of The Jewish Journal contains two very disturbing articles about the use of federal, state and Saudi money to fund school curricula that push Islam on our children and teachers. Equally disturbing was the Journal’s decision to place these important stories about a real threat to Jews on page 7 instead of on page 1, above the fold. Instead, the editors chose for the top of page 1 an article about the UN General Assembly naming a day “to honor victims of the Holocaust,” and a picture of a smiling woman “participat[ing] in a vigil marking the 2,000th soldier killed in Iraq.”

Very little that the General Assembly does has any real meaning for Israel, and the commemoration of the 2,000th American killed in Iraq had already been given enormous front page coverage. Is it too much to expect that a Jewish newspaper should give precedence to the dangerous Islamic brain washing of American children and teachers, especially when this is partially funded by our governments? If not these stories, surely the vandalization of two North Shore synagogues, which implies danger for local Jews, would have been a better story for page 1.

But even worse than the article placement is the fact that the editors totally ignored an international event that has enormous significance to Jews everywhere — the overwhelming participation in and voter approval of the Iraqi Constitution. Democratization of the Middle East presents the best chance for Israelis and all Jews to live in peace, just as America’s conversion of Germany and Japan into free societies has prevented both of these formerly militaristic powers from starting a war since that conversion.

True, the Globe, Times and Washington Post buried the coverage of this momentous Iraqi event deep within, but the Journal is a Jewish newspaper, and the Iraqi election means far more to us as Jews than do either of the stories at the top of page 1.

I also don’t understand why the photographer of the pictures on pages 1 and 9 made it appear that those keeping the vigil to be smiling and seemed to be having a good time. I cannot believe that they really were happy, given the sadness of the event that they were commemorating.

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Thanksgiving Is an Opportunity To Reconsider Immigration