American Jewish Committee Leadership Program

Folks, let it not be said that I dont respond to my readers. After several of you complained that I deigned to comment on the Jimmy Carter controversy without actually reading the book, I have gone out and pruchased a copy at the inflated price of $30 and am now in the middle of it. So far I can say that its mind-numbingly boring for the most part, even when going over the fascinating history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the past 30 years; some of which I witnessed myself as a young man (like Sadat's 1977 visit to Jerusalem). But I'll leave my political analysis for the next posting. In the meantime, please read my piece on the AJC Russian Leadership Program, which ran last Sunday in the New York Daily News. Unfortunately, it did not appear on the DN's website for some reason, but here is the piece as I wrote it.By Walter Ruby

Boris Serebro, a 50-year-old attorney from White Plains who came to New York from Odessa at the age of 30 and Yana Stunis, a 24-year-old Manhattan resident and trader at a major New York bank, who arrived here with her family from Moldova as an 8-year-old, are a generation apart with very different life experiences, but both have long seen their respective paths into philanthropic and political life as running through the Russian Jewish community.

So both Serebro and Stunis were gratified when they were invited a year ago to join the American Jewish Committee’s Russian Jewish Leadership Program, a cooperative venture of the AJC and a group of Russian Jewish activists launched in 1997 to train current and potential leaders of the Russian Jewish community in advocacy for Israel, leadership skills, and building ethnic coalitions. Since the beginning of the program, more than 200 people, including nearly all of the major political and organizational leaders of the New York Russian Jewish community, have graduated the year-long AJC Leadership Program and applied the skills learned there to organize the Russian community and help Russian Jews to participate more fully in American Jewish life.

Serebro, a partner at the Manhattan law firm of Olonoff, Afen and Serebro, said he found the AJC Leadership Program a good fit for him because it is run by and for Russian Jews but under the aegis of a “not-for-profit well established organization outside of the Russian community. The Leadership Program makes a huge effort to bridge the gap between Russian Jews and mainstream American Jews. During lectures and discussions headed by some of the AJC’s top experts on American foreign and domestic politics and American Jewish life, Russian Jews are exposed to ideas and opinions they usually don’t have a chance to hear within the Russian community. I learned a great deal about many political and social issues.”

Despite being, in her own words “more American than Russian,” Stunis, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, said she grew up in the Russian community in Brooklyn with a strong sense that “We Russians are a distinct community.” Stunis said, “The AJC Leadership Program gave me the chance for the first time to be a part of a group that represents the interests of the Russian community as a whole. I also had the opportunity to meet incredible people of all ages and positions in life; many of whom are terrific mentors and role models.” Stunis added, “I was proud to represent the younger generation within the Leadership Program and let the leaders of our community to know that there are people of my generation who share their interests and pride in our roots.”

At a festive event held earlier this month which marked both the ‘graduation’ from the AJC Russian Leadership Program of Serebro, Stunes and 33 other members of the Class of 2006, and the 10th Anniversary of the creation of the Leadership Program, some 200 prominent Russian Jews, including New York State Assemblyman Alec Brook-Krasny, financier Felix Frenkel, Dr. Igor Branovan, President of Russian American Jews for Israel and Leonard Petlakh, executive director of the Kings Bay Y, gathered to reminisce as to how the Russian Leadership Program impacted their lives. Peretz Goldmacher, an 87-year-old community organizer, widely seen as the patriarch of the Russian Jewish community, recalled that when he and sociologist Sam Kliger visited several American Jewish organizations ten years ago and pleaded with them to sponsor the first ever Russian Jewish leadership program; “We were received polite receptions and nice smiles, but not much else. Only when I called the American Jewish Committee did we find people like Dr. Steve Bayme (director of AJC's department of Contemporary Jewish Life) David Harris (AJC executive vice president) who were willing to seriously consider our proposal and to take a chance on a pilot program.”

Kliger, who was eventually appointed as head of Russian Jewish Affairs at the American Jewish Committee and head of the Russian Leadership Program, said, “It makes me enormously proud to see that over the past decade, graduates of this program have permeated the entire American social fabric, whether it is in politics, business or social services. This program has greatly strengthened the Russian community and has built bridges of understanding between Russian Jews and mainstream American Jews. By accomplishing those goals, this program is clearly strengthening the American Jewish community as well.”

In a warm salute to David Harris, Brook-Krasny, who recently became the first Russian-speaker elected to political office in the United States, compared the AJC leader, who is unique among American Jewish leaders in speaking Russian and having been expelled from Moscow during the early 1970’s for making contacts with Soviet Jewish activists, to Martin Luther King, remarking that that just as King built bridges between blacks and whites, Harris helped to unite American-born Jews and Russian-speaking Jews. Brook-Krasny said that Harris “convinced people on his side (of the divide between the two communities) that the people on our side were worth reaching out to.”

Clearly moved by the affection shown to him by members of the the Russian Leadership Program, Harris told the crowd that his encounters with Soviet Jews over 30 years ago represented the defining moment in the development of his own Jewish identity. “You opened my eyes to the joy of being a Jew, rather than the ‘oi’” Harris said. “Many of you express gratitude to the AJC, but we have much more to thank you for than vice versa. You bring courage, strength and passion to American Jewish life and we badly need it.”

Harris concluded, “When the President of Iran says that he wants to destroy Israel, some say, ‘He doesn’t mean it seriously,’ but because of your historical experience in the Soviet Union, you take such remarks with deadly seriousness. I believe it is your job to awaken American Jews to the realities of the world.” Harris concluded that while “American-born and Russian Jews will never look at the world in exactly the same way, we need to continue reaching out to each other through the Russian Jewish Leadership Program and other means. Each of us has his own path, but we are on the same journey, with a common destiny.”

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Jimmy Carter, retreat of the American right, partying with the Russian intelligensia

Druzya, I'm back with a vengeance and promise to be more frequent in my postings from now on.
several people have criticized me here for commenting on the Jimmy Carter controversy without reading Carter's book. Fair enough, but I know enough about the controversy and about Carter's seminal role in helping Israel secure its first peace treaty with an Arab country back in 1979 to know that he doesnt deserve being savaged, as he was by Dershowitz, for "having (Jewish) blood on his hands. Recent coverage of Carter's appearance at Brandeis by my friend Larry Cohler in the Jewish Week reinforces my thinking in this regard.


Now for a few other points>
Watching Bush's State of the Union earlier this week made me realize how irrelevant he has become and how the country has already moved on and suddenly become a much more progressive place. The November election crashed down the door, but power continues to flow away from Bush and his now-discredited ultra-conservative ideology. If we look to the issues of the immediate and long term future, the horror in Iraq, health care, the chickens coming home to roost re global warning, none of which the right has a solution for, there is reason for optimism that the ultra-conservatism that has dominated our politics since at least 1980 has finally been put to rout. How the Dems will deal with their chance is a big question, whether Hillary is the way to go, or whether she has lost all her progressive principles and now only craves power--what about Obama and Edwards--these are important questions for the next 12 months, but for the first time in decades there is reason to be hopeful about the direction of America. It is just that Bush and company have done such enormous damage to almost every facet of life in this country and a lot of the damage is irreversible. To me, the main issue now is how quickly the country's leadership--and the world's--will move to come up with a serious plan to slow and eventually reverse global warming; the very survival of our civilization and our kids and grandkids depends on it. For his flagrant fiddling while the world burned over the past 7 years, Bush will earn the eternal contempt of history.


I went to a terrific party last night at the home of a couple well known as members of the Russian intelligensia of Washington Heights. There were about 12 people there, several artists, a new age therapist, a doctor, a lawyer, a few computer people, but they evinced a special free-thinking Russian sensibility that I had long heard about but never experienced first hand before. I got quite drunk by mixing wine, cognac and vodka, never a good idea at my age, but while I remember relatively little, some impressions remain; here were a number of Russians who were ardent lefties (although I found that the justified contempt of the host of the affair for Bush, made him entirely too tolerant of Putin, the thug in the Kremlin, who he saw as a useful counterwieght, together with the Chinese, against the power of the U.S. Talk about a delightful form of congnative dissonance. They were hardly perfect, but it was refreshing to find myself with Russians with progressive politics and in love with art, music and ideas as opposed to money and fancy homes in New Jersey and Westchester and expensive cruises.


They quizzed me a lot on Israel and Jewish issues; several were to the left of me on Israel, but it seemed to me, sadly, that they totally didnt 'get' what makes Israel such a vibrant and life-affirming place despite the horrors of the conflict with the Palestinians. I spoke about my encounters with Pamyat, Cossacks and various other neo-fascist thugs back in the 1980's and early 90's and one, a doctor with a blonde Russian-non-Jewish wife told me that he feels strongly and proudly Jewish except that he was never attracted to Jewish women. I told him I used to have similar complexes until I discovered Israeli women back in the mid-70's and blondes never again had the same appeal.

Anyway, my partner Tanya and I had a wonderful time at the party and it was great to experience a very different, lively and eclectic face of Russian New York

Continued...

Sam Kliger's tribute to Yuri Shtern

This is a tribute by my friend Sam Kliger, head of Russian Jewish Affairs at the American Jewish Committee to the memory of Yuri Shtern, who he got to know back in Moscow in 1980. Thanks for sharing this, Sam


Мой друг Юрий Штерн

Из Израиля пришла скорбная весть. Умер друг. Детали его биографии сегодня хорошо известны многим, но для меня они еще и персонально окрашены и озвучены.
Я познакомился с Юрой зимой 1980 года “на горке” у московской синагоги, когда он был уже широко известным в кругах московских отказников еврейским активистом, а я только робко вступал на скользкую и опасную дорогу зарождающегося полуподпольного еврейского движения за свободу эмиграции в Израиль. Мы пошли по обледенелой Москве, зашли в какой-то переулок и там, забегая время от времени в подъезд незнакомого дома погреться, часа два проговорили о еврейских делах. Юра, узнав, что я социолог, сразу предложил “дело”: провести вдвоем и конспиративно небольшое исследование-опрос знакомых с тем, чтобы выяснить настроения в еврейской среде, намерения и планы, связанные с отъездом в Израиль (или в Америку), кто за что “сидит в отказе.” Мы оба понимали смертельность такого шага. Щаранский уже сидел в тюрьме за попытку проделать подобное. Но если я прилично трусил, то Юра ничего не боялся. И только много позже я понял, что во всем, что касалось безопасности и благополучия евреев и Израиля, Юра был бесстрашным и неутомимым бойцом. Именно эти его бойцовские качества и помогли ему совершить невозможное – получить, в числе немногих, разрешение на выезд в Израиль в 1981 году – тогда, когда казалось, что узкая дверь, ведущая вон из Советского Союза, захлопнулась навсегда или надолго. Только бесстрашный боец Юриного калибра смог пробить брешь в Израильском истеблишменте и стать в 1996 году членом Израильского Кнессета. Юра верил в то, что он делает, и не боялся сказать о том, что он считал правильным и полезным для еврейкого народа и Израиля. Вопреки предостерегающим политкорректным голосам он создал коалицию депутатов Кнессета с евангелическими христианами, он защищал интересы русскоязычного еврейства везде и всюду, он не боялся говорить правду.
За два часа до начала еврейского Нового Года Рош Гашана в сентябре Юра позвонил мне из Нью Йорка и вместе с женой Леной приехал ко мне домой. Я не забуду этого вечера. Юра нахваливал приготовленную моей женой рыбу, запивая ее водкой, и мы говорили и пели до полуночи песни нашей молодости. Юра, уже смертельно больной, был очень живой, веселый, и остроумный… Мы встретились снова, теперь уже в последний раз, в октябре в Израиле на конференции в Бар-Иланском университете посвященной русскоязычному еврейству, где Юра, как всегда, блестяще выступил. И вот его не стало. Его жена Лена, его дети и семья потеряли любимого человека. Израиль потерял депутата Кнессета, крупного политика, интеллектуала и общественного деятеля. Еврейский народ потерял бессташного защитника его интересов, активиста, энтузиаста и бойца. А я потерял друга. Да будет благословенна память о нем! Я вместе Борисом Горбисом из Лос Анжелеса предлагаю создать Фонд в память о Юре с целью развития русскоязычных общин в Америке и Израиле. Информация о Фонде будет скоро опубликована.
Юру похоронили в Иерусалиме, что для любого еврея большая честь, которую Юра заслужил всей своей жизнью.

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In Defense of Jimmy Carter

And now, in case I haven’t made myself unpopular enough already, I feel compelled to rise to the defense of Jimmy Carter.

The fact is that I haven’t read the former president’s book Palestine: Peace or Apartheid that has gotten him into such trouble in the Jewish community, so I am not in a position to say I agree with everything he has written there. Yet I do agree strongly with the following sentences from an op-ed piece Carter wrote a couple of days ago in the Washington Post.

"The clear fact is that Israel will never find peace until it is willing to withdraw from its neighboring occupied territories and permit the Palestinians to exercise their basic human and political rights. With land swaps, this "green line" can be modified through negotiations to let a substantial number of Israeli settlers remain in their subsidized homes east of the internationally recognized border."

That’s the truth, that’s reality and that’s the simple equation that many in the American Jewish community don’t seem to get. For 40 years, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and Arab East Jerusalem has involved a determined denial of the basic human and political rights of another people and it is long since obvious that violence will continue until it ends.

Some say Carter is being unfair in putting all the onus on Israel for the present impasse; noting that the Palestinians, with their rejection of the 2000 Camp David agreement, their subsequent violent behavior, including suicide bombings, and election of Hamas have contributed mightily to the situation. I would agree with that, but lets be honest here; if Israel hadn’t wanted to absorb the West Bank, why would it have allowed a quarter of a million Israelis (not including the several hundred thousand in East Jerusalem) to settle there? If the security fence is supposed to be the new border, why are thousands of Israelis still moving every year to settlements on the other side of the fence? Why has the Israeli government been unable or unwilling even to remove the scores of illegal outposts it has repeatedly promised to remove? So don’t tell me Israel is on the West Bank only because it is forced to be there by Palestinian militancy; not because it still isn’t trying to grab as much land as possible.

Is it fair or accurate to label the Israeli occupation of the West Bank ‘apartheid’? True, the whites of South Africa set up their system of ‘separateness’ de jure; Israel’s system in the West Bank has kind of evolved in piecemeal fashion, often in response to acts of Palestinian violence. Still, there it is; a system that has been in existence for 40 years now, in which one set of human beings residing on the territory of the West Bank are citizens of the State of Israel with all democratic rights, whereas the others—the great majority---are not citizens and have few if any rights guaranteed by law. They can be jailed for long periods without charges and without access to attorney. They are penned in by an ever-expanding series of roadblocks that not only make it ever more difficult to enter Israel, including Jerusalem, but even to move from one West Bank town to another. There a series of roads running through the territory set up primarily for settler and military traffic upon which Palestinians are barred from driving. The settlers, who hate them, are armed and frequently violent, and the Palestinians know that the army will rarely protect them from settler attacks.

The Jewish members who resigned from the Carter Center, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Dennis Ross and others, have all complained that Carter go this or that fact wrong in his book as a way of discrediting his overall argument. They may have a point or two, but Carter is right about the bottom line, which is that Israeli oppression of the Palestinians in the West Bank has become institutionalized and it’s a grim and ugly business that demeans Israelis as well as Palestinians. It also contributes powerfully to the ongoing radicalization of the Palestinians and the whole Islamic world, something that is very much NOT in Israel’s and America’s interests.

The truth is that American Jewish lovers of Israel (including myself), don’t like to look this reality in the face, so we often employ a liberal amount of airbrushing. We fasten onto the word ‘apartheid’ and say Carter got it wrong, that its not really apartheid, as a way to prevent an honest examination of what is really going on. Or we snort loudly and indignantly and scream ‘anti-Semitism’. A few weeks ago I attended a speech by Alan Dershowitz at a Chabad-Lubavitch event in which Dershowitz literally bellowed; "Jimmy Carter has blood on his hands” for having written Palestine; Peace or Apartheid? Now, one may disagree strongly with Carter’s arguments, but where does Dershowitz get off with this ’blood on his hands’ charge? This is after all, the same Jimmy Carter who helped Israel to reach its peace agreement with Egypt, a peace agreement still with us today that has given Israel three decades of peace on its southern border. Does this man deserve to be charged with causing Jewish blood to be shed?

When I asked Dershowitz what he meant by his charge, he replied that Carter was contributing to an atmosphere of demonization of the Jews along with the likes of Iranian President Ahmadinejad with his Holocaust denial and threats against Israel’s survival, specifically by charging that American Jewish supporters of Israel prevent a rational debate from taking place in Washington on Israeli policy. Well, the ferocious reaction to Carter’s book by Dershowitz and others, who have responded by smearing the former President and savaging his reputation, seems to be Example A of what Carter is talking about; if you criticize Israeli policy in a serious way, expect to see yourself charged with anti-Semitism and literally having Jewish blood on your hands. No wonder that many American politicians are leery to speak what they know to be the truth for fear of getting the kind of clobbering Jimmy Carter is now enduring. Who needs that kind of tsuris?

I am sure 82-year-old Carter did not need this kind of trouble either, but he spoke out because his conscience impelled him to do so and because he knew that the present Israeli-Palestinian impasse is not good for Israel, the Palestinians, America or the world. Again, there is plenty of blame to go around, and the Palestinians shopuld get their fair share, but there should also be no whitewashing of Israel’s own contribution to the mess; its 40-year-campaign to grab as much of the West Bank as possible and oppress its Palestinian residents in the process. That needs to end, for the sake of Israel and the Jewish people, as well as the Palestinians, and kol hakavod to Jimmy Carter for having the guts to say so forcefully.

Continued...

Yuri Shtern z"l

I have just been informed of the passing of MK Yuri Shtern of a brain tumor at the age of 58.

Yuri was a dear friend of mine for 23 years, starting from the days in the early 80's when he used to come to New York to campaign on behalf of freedom for Prisoners of Zion like Anatoly Sharansky, Ida Nudel, Iosif Begun and so many others. Quick witted, fluent in English charming and charismatic, Yuri was a natural spokesman for a cause then at its lowest ebb. Yuri's natural ebullience and optimism in the face of relentlessly grim news from the Soviet Union, helped to buck up supporters of the movement in the U.S. Together with Lynn Singer, the late head of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry, Yuriu helped set up my first trip to the Soviet Union in July 1985, when I visited Sharansky's brother Leonid, Prof. Alexander Lerner and others, including Yuri's sister who lived in an immense apartment complex on the southern reaches of Moscow it took me hours to find. Later, after visiting refusenik Lev Shapiro in Leningrad, a companion and I were set upon by two KGB thugs who roughed us up and scared me to within an inch of my life. But by that time, I was already hooked on the cause of Soviet Jewry, a world first opened to me by Yuri Shtern and ended up making three more visits to refuseniks during the 80's before becoming an on-the-ground correspondent in Moscow from 1990-1992.

In the years after the collpse of the USSR, Yuri entered politics, first with Sharansky in Yisrael b'Aliyah and eventually rising to the Number 2 position in Yisrael Beiteinu behind Avigdor Lieberman. Yuri and I had obviously always had very different takes on the Israel-Palestine conflict, but that had seemed less relevant when we had a common cause of saving Soviet Jews. Overt the past decade or so, we had several animated discussions on the theme, but never lost our original feeling of mutual affection. Yuri was always incredibly warm and seemed animated by the principle of ahavat yisrael--i.e. you dont dismiss or demonize a fellow Jew even when you disagree profoundly on an issue of life and death for our people. The tributes to Yuri from Dalia Itzhik and Ehud Olmert in todays Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com as an immensely decent and cultiavted man who happened to have hard-line views, are right on target.

I last saw Yuri last October at a conference on the Russian community in Israel, that drew many of Israel's leading Russian politicans and academics to Bar-Ilan University. It was shocking to see him gaunt and bald from chemotherapy (see above photo with Yuli Edelshtein) but his effervesent spirit was alive and well. After giving his speech at about noon, he stayed for the end of the day, taking part in all of the discussions and expressing encouragement to several young sociologists who had just written their theses on the state of Russian Jewry in Israel. Yuri must have been exhausted (he was then in the middle of the intensive negotiations that soon led to Olmert taking Lieberman into his cabinet), but he still had time and energy for the conference and to express words of warmth and friendship to me. Throughout his long illness he behaved with consummate grace and dignity, never giving way to self-pity, and always staying in the fray.

There are many lessons for me in Yuri's life, but the main one is never to forget that the measure of a person's worth is not his or her political views, but as Martin Luther King would put it, the content of his character. Yuri was a mensch's mensch. I will miss him deeply.

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Thoughts on the Brook-Krasny Inaguration Ceremony

The New York Democratic political establishment turned out full-throttle to welcome the long-awaited ascension of Alec Brook-Krasny to his perch in the New York State Legislature. Among those who spoke about what just about everyone who spoke termed the “historic” nature of Krasny becoming the first ‘Russian-American’ elected to higher office in New York included Sen. Charles Schmuer, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Cong. Jerrold Nadler, Cong. Anthony Weiner, State Senator Karl Kruger, Brooklyn Boro President Marty Markowitz, Couty leader Vito Lopez and a bevy of other Brooklyn politicos including Brook-Krasny’s closest political ally and soulmate—the man who defeated him back in 2001 for the city council seat he still holds, Domenic Recchia. Only Nadler had the historical memory to point out that in all likelihood some of the immigrant Jews elected to the Assembly or City Council back at the beginning of the 20th Century from the Lower East Side or other parts of the city probably spoke Russian, having just arrived in the Goldenye Medina from the shtetl, then under the rule of the Russian Empire. But in any case, Nadler said, Krasny was clearly the first ‘Russian-American’ elected in the last several generations.

Overall, the event was quite touching; the spectacle of the political establishment finally recognizing that the Russian community had arrived and paying tribute to the community packed an emotional wallop, and there were more than a few tears shed by many in the rapt audience, mainly composed of Russians who had supported Brook-Krasny’s campaign. To see the top people from Schumer on down embracing Alec and welcoming him and his community into the tent was very affecting and certainly, as everybody said, an expression of American democracy and how previously disenfranchised communities organize and finally manage to muscle their way into the system to get their fair share of the oh so delectable pie. PR Guru Marina Kovalyova had it right when she said to me, “One thing is for sure; this would never have happened in Russia.”

To some extent though, the good vibes were diminished by the fact that the Master of Ceremonies for the event was Democratic District Leader Dilia Schack, a hard-charging political operative who for years employed questionable political practices with the connivance of the Brooklyn Democratic machine to defeat Brook-Krasny and other Russian candidates on behalf of the former State Asssemblyperson Adele Cohen, long the bete noire of the Russian community. But last year, as Nadler and other political heavyweights (I hate to use that word when writing about Nadler, but it’s the only one that fits), like Kruger and Recchia decided that fix was in and the time had come to dump Adele and anoint Krasny in order to keep most of the Russians at least nominally within the Democratic Party. So Dilia switched seamlessly to the Brook-Krasny camp, bringing her hardball tactics to the service of BK who subsequently eked out a precarious victory of 94 votes (later amended to 140 in a Board of Elections recount) over a second Russian candidate, Ari Kagan. At Brook-Krasny’s election eve celebration, Dilia exulted from the podium that in delivering the closely fought victory to BK, the Brooklyn Democratic machine had made its opponents “feel our sting.”

And there was Dilia yesterday running things at Alec’s inauguration ceremony, with her husband, Arthur, a NY State Supreme Court judge, bizarrely along in tow to deliver the oath of office to Brook-Krasny. Am I the only one to find the preeminence of Schack at an event commemorating a supposedly new and cleaner day for all of the constituents of the 46th Assembly District to be in questionable taste? I can understand that Brook-Krasny has to work with the political establishment to get elected and get things done now that he is in office, but isn’t there a way to do that without putting Dilia up front at his signature public events? The feeling she transmits is; ‘I screwed the Russian community on behalf of the Brooklyn Democratic machine for as long as I could, and then when demographic reality kicked in, we went out and got ourselves a Russian who was ready to play ball with the machine. For me, Russian, Mongolian, nye vajno, the main thing is keeping the machine in power’.

I must say I have a different, much more positive reaction to Krasny’s evidently very close relationship with Domenic Recchia. I admire both men for being able to put aside the bitterness of having opposed each other in 2001 and subsequently building a bond over the past few years, through which BK koshered Domenic in the Russian community and in the process convinced the Italian-American City Councilman to support him when Cohen stepped (or was pushed) aside. The alliance is all about the political needs of both men to be sure, and yet it is clearly also a genuine deep friendship based on the sheer love of politics they share and, I would like to believe, a commitment to delivering life-enhancing services to constituents the two men share in their overlapping districts, Russians, blacks, Hispanics, Italian-Americans, American-born Jews and everyone else.

I doubt Recchia is spotless, but in his charmingly unsophisticated ‘cut through the bullshit’ outer-borough form of expression, he transmits a desire to serve his constituents, including his less-well-off constituents well, as, I believe, does Brook-Krasny. The question for both men is will they stand for the little people when the chips are down and the big landlords start moving in to carve up Coney Island into luxury housing. There will be a lot of pressure on both men to play along with the rich boys. When push comes to shove, will the twins of south Brooklyn politics be willing to take a principled stand for poor blacks and Hispanics and elderly Russians.

In his own speech, Alec hit the right notes; saying that his victory was not only one of the Russian community, but of all immigrant communities now getting on their feet including third world groups like Pakistanis, Dominicans and Africans. One thing Alex has shown is a genuine commitment over the years to building bridges across racial and ethnic lines. Krasny also promised to fight hard to improve schools, health care and affordable housing, including to try to prevent the possible loss of precious Mitchell Lama housing, and to help preserve the character of various communities under siege of gentrification, including Coney Island, Dyker Heights and Bay Ridge.

So Alec is in power and the jury is out. As the other Democratic District Leader, Mark Davidovich, said to me in response to a question, it is critical now to heal the rifts in the Russian community caused by the bitter campaign and to do so “by meeting with everyone in the community, whether they supported (B-K) or not.” In reaching out and healing wounds though, Brook-Krasny may have to make difficult choices. In this context, consider what someone identifying himself as ‘Locke’ wrote on rubyjewsday in response to my last posting, “The dispute between AK and ABK was never ideological; AK thought we need to take care of the poor and elderly first, where ABK thought we need to take care of the businesses that pay the taxes that make it possible to take care of the poor and the elderly. ABK won; QED.”

Well, Locke, it seems to me that a decision whether to focus on helping the poor and elderly first or taking care of businesses first IS very much about ideology. It will be interesting to see whether Alec will be able to reach out to both groups effectively enough to satisfy both or whether he will have to make difficult choices between them. My friend, Anatoli Belilovsky, who owns the largest pediatric clinic in Brighton Beach, said he hopes Alec remembers his roots as a local businessman (running Fun-O-Rama in the late 1990’s) and makes helping the local business community his principle priority. Here is hoping for the exact opposite; that BK remembers the needs of the large number of people in the district, Russian, black, Hispanic, Pakistani and undocumented people of all backgrounds who are powerless, without money and living in dismal and dangerous conditions. I’m sure Alec’s business supporters could use someone in Albany to further their agenda, but most of them seem to be doing pretty well already. Alec, pajalsta, please don’t forget the little people.

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thanks to Martin Horwitz and Anonymous for thoughtful comments

Just a brief note to express appreciation for the comments by Martin Horwitz and Anonymous to my last posting and Martin's previous one as well.I have long admired Martin's work with American Jewish World Service reaching out to the residents of small villages and shtetlach in Ukraine and helping them to rekindle the spark of Jewish life. So Martin is a kindred spirit of mine, who shares my love for Russian Jewry on one hand but speaks fluent Russian (unlike my half-ass pigeon Russian), and has really toiled in the vinyards of the FSU for many years in a quiet and heroic way. Yet he also shares my liberal politics and is clearly struggling with the same political divide vis a vis much of Russian Jewry as I am. Martin, I may be reaching only a relatively small number of people with this blog at present, but dye Bog, I'll have enough strength to continue this effort for a long time to come and have some impact. The discussion is needed and it is up to people of good will on both sides of the divide to get it started and keep it going. Many thanks for your kindness and support.

As for Anonymous, I liked your unsemtimental, tackhlis oriented analysis a lot. Its true that Russian Jews are far from right-wing fanatics, in fact, as you say, they are social liberals on some issues like abortion, they value professional expertise over ideology in their politics as in daily life. I concur with everything you write here based on my coverage of South Brooklyn politics over the past five years. What you didnt mention is that there is a strong internal tension between support of Bush on one hand and the need of many in the Russian community, especially the elderly, for social benefits. Indeed, the community swung sharply into the Democratic camp in the mid-1990's after Gingrich and company began cutting social benefits and engaging in squalid anti-immigrant politics (for example taking SSI benefits away from elderly immigrants who are unable to pass the citizenship test because their English isnt good enough. Despite voting 77 percent for Bush in 2004, mainly out of gratitude for his hard-line Israel and Middle East policies, most Russians in NY have remained Democrats and of course, the hard fought Brook-Krasny--Kagan electoral battle of 2006 took place within the Democratic Party.

As for your percpetion that Russians oppose liberal politics in Israel and America because they dont want to give in to terrorists, suicide bombers and other evil doers, that is certainly an understandable reaction. But that is not what is going on. It is NOT about liberals foolishly embracing an undefeated enemy, as you put it; it is about trying to end conflicts that are consuming our own children as well as that of the 'enemy.' And, yes, the leaders of the military wing of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are our enemies, but that doesnt mean every Palestinian is. Yet the policies of the Israeli/Jewish right, the policies of silnaya ruka, have gone a long way to turning almost every Palestinian who cares for his own people into supporters of Hamas, Jihad, etc. because in the face of Israeli recalcitrance, in the face of 40 years of settlement building, land grabbing and repression of basic Palestinian human rights, they literally see no alternative to their own extremists. To be sure, their extremists and their murderous behaviour have the same effect of stimulating extrmism on our side. Eto naziviyitze "vicious circle" and there has never been a circle as vicious and as lacking a way out than the 100 year plus Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It will continue to be that way; consuming the young on both sides for another 100 years, unless we figure out a way out of the vicio0us circle. The right wing does not offer a credible way out. Cracking down harder has bee tried and it doesnt work. What about trying another approach? Nu, davai...

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S’NOVIM GODOM!

S’novim Godom, shastya y zdaroviyeh fsyem miy’em druzyam y cheetatelam!

Things have getting very heavy lately on rubyjewsday, with no-holds-barred debates highlighting the yawning ideological chasm between my dovish outlook on Israeli politics and the truculent, Lieberman-adoring hawkishness characterizing much of the Russian Jewish community (at least the blogging portion of the Russian community). And fundamentally, that is as it should be. After all, I started this blog last spring in large part to challenge certain beliefs of a community that I love and feel connected to, but which manifests political beliefs that are far from my own and which, if not challenged and eventually transformed, will have the effect of dragging Israel—a country that is central to my being as well as my political opponents-- in a direction which I believe is inimical to hopes for peace and to Israel’s own best interests.

So I feel this discussion is not only valuable, but absolutely necessary. Yet I also want everyone to know that the give and take on that issue is hard for me because I am not a confrontational person by nature, because I love the Russian community and because I am all too aware that the revelation of my political leanings will cause many people who have admired my coverage of the community here and in the Jewish Week to turn away in disillusion, saying “Shto??? On levee??? Ujus y kashmar.”

So yes, I am a proud liberal on Israel and on most American domestic issues as well. Still, I hope that enough readers who may disagree with my politics will say; ‘Nu, so here is a chance to debate these painful issues, to try to understand why Bush-loving Russian Jews and Bush-loathing American Jews have such a different sglad. In short, I hope that readers will stay with a blog that challenges their core beliefs, rather than simply panders to them and says, ‘You are right, you are right.’ I am assuming right-leaning Russian Jews already have enough media-sources (Novoye Russkoye Slovo, RTVI, RTN and so many others) that echoes their belief systems that they will find it mentally stimulating to come to a place that challenges them with beliefs they may find cause for anger and heartburn.

I want to repeat something I have said before; that my challenge to many Russians’ Likud/GOP agenda comes from a place of profound respect and deep empathy for the community. I am that strange American Jew who feels more at home among Russian-speaking Jews than among my “own kind.” I speak Russian, write about the Russian community, and live with a Russian-speaking woman. Many of my American friends accuse me on having ‘gone native’ after my years in Moscow (1990-1992) and in a way I have. I feel freer and more alive among Russians—mainly Russian Jews—than I do among Americans. I’m not sure exactly why; I just like the Russian Jewish way of looking at the world, except when we come to politics. It’s a contradiction—actually more of a dialectic, to use a Marxian word of choice, but its one that keeps me endlessly captivated.

Also, to let readers know that this forum is and will continue to be about a lot more than debating politics. My next posting, for example, will be reportage from one of the Brighton Beach New Years parties for Russian elderly—specifically survivors of the Holocaust and ask the question; what keeps so many elderly Russians, most of whom are living on modest fixed incomes—so healthy and vibrant. And there will be lots more good stuff coming up after that. So hang in there, gang, rubyjewsday is just getting warmed up.

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