Ruby Jewsday

DOES THE RIGHT REALLY LOVE AMERICA MORE THAN THE LEFT?

2008-12-26T16:14:00.000-08:00

See below link for Joel Stein's recent piece entitled

DO REPUBLICANS LOVE AMERICA TOO MUCH?

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-stein26-2008dec26,0,5178459.column

I don’t usually like Joel Stein, who, I find to be too cute and smarmy by half, but this is a wonderfully written piece. Wonderful, but dangerous as well.
In this article, Stein writes in a sometimes playful and ironic but ultimately self-critical mode; acknowledging that he and other liberals do not love America in the aggressive, flag waving ‘my country right or wrong’ way as does the Republican right. In fact, Stein affirms, he does love America, but he has a too nuanced view of reality to blather on about America being in the words of the atrocious Sean Hannity "the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the Earth."

Obviously luxuriating in the false security of Obama’s victory, Stein is in an indulgent mood; ready to cede that kind of vulgar, blathering patriotism to the Right and good enough not to quote Samuel Johnson that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” I wish he had taken a harder-edged stand, because in affirming rightly that liberals are too civilized and universalistic to “bleed red, white and blue”—another one of the idiotic maxims Hannity employs to express his supposedly boundless love of America, Stein overlooks the reality that the super-patriotism of the right is a false pretense.

If nothing else, the Republican right’s strident opposition in the past few weeks to the modest bailout of the Big Three automakers made clear that they are far less in love with America than they are with Darwinian capitalism. Faced with the prospect of providing a $15 billion lifeline to GM, Chrysler and Ford—a lifeline with strict conditions and a fraction of the hundreds of billions that had already been provided to the financial industry---the GOP, in the thrall of southern senators like Mitch McConnell, Bob Corker and Bob Shelby and Richard Shelby, said, “Let the U.S. auto industry go bankrupt.” Their own states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama are filled with auto plants owned by Japanese and German automakers who came there so they could employ non-unionized workers at much lower wages than paid the unionized auto workers in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. So they were happy to write off GM, Chrysler etc, which would obviously be just fine for the interests of Honda and V.W. The only way the Repubs would agree to help the Big Three is if the UAW gives up all the protections and higher wages it has fought for 100 years to obtain for the auto workers.

So here were the vast majority of the 40-plus remaining GOP senators, backed up by Hannity and his brother in hysterical patriotism, Rush Limbaugh, saying in effect ‘Screw the America auto industry with an historic pedigree going back to 1900 and screw the American worker as well'. All that matters to these suppsed super-patriots is lean, mean profitability ’ and getting rid of unions. If that means favoring Japanese automakers over American ones, then so be it.

It is dismaying that few commentators have seen fit to pick up on this episoide as clear evidence of the falseness of the right’s claim to be the upholders of American interests and values. I guess they have been laying claim to that title for so long that they have managed to brainwash the rest of us into accepting it. But it would seem to me self-evident that the side pressing to have the government extend itself to save American companies and workers (not to mention the millions of non-auto workers who depend on the auto industry for their own economic well-being) should per se be considered more patriotic than the side saying, ‘Let all these fellow Americans go under.’ Indeed, its inexplicable that these people continue to get away with wrapping themselves in red, white and blue (not to mention holier than thou) as they go out of their way to hurt real Americans.

Nor is this double game something that just surfaced with the auto bailout issue. Throughout the Bush years, the right-wing lustily waved the flag as it enthusiastically trashed the environment, trashed basic consumer protections, and skewed the U.S. system in the interests of the very rich. If these charlatans love America so much, why do they support policies that hurt the interests of so many poor, working class and middle class Americans? If they love America so much, why do they implement policies that pour dangerous chemicals into our streams and air, and make possible the actual blowing up of mountains in West Virginia; all so that we can keep burning more coal and rendering the planet, which includes America as well, rapidly uninhabitable? Leave aside for a moment the mind-boggling short-sightedness of these policies; the question is how they ever came to be seen as an expression of love for America?

And how did Bush and Cheney get away for 8 years with promoting the notion that trashing the Constitution to legalize torture, electronic surveillance and holding people indefinitely without access to a trail, was a manifestation of true-blue patriotism? The right screams till they are blue in the face how much they love freedom and democracy and then they go and institute Big Brother. Yet so successful have they been in selling the notion that this is the patriotic course that Obama looks less and less willing to deconstruct the authoritarian security state with an omnipotent President that Bush and Cheney created. Even in their moment of defeat, they have reason for satisfaction that they were successful in moving America towards a permanent presidential despotism.

So Joel Stein is generous in a big-hearted, quasi-ironic way in his readiness to cede super-patriotism to the right, but it turns out we cant afford to do that if we really love America enough to want her to survive as a genuine democracy committed to the well-being of all of her citizens. Their vociferous claims to the contrary, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh don’t really love the core values of America; indeed, they despise all that truly made America in the past—and might even do so again—the last best hope of mankind on Earth. Somehow the right has managed to get away for 40 years with brainwashing the public into believing the notion that the best way to love America is to despise the American government and strip away its power to ameliorate social injustice to the point where it becomes a supine appendage of Wall Street, even as Wall Street was dropping off a cliff.

Let us hope that as Obama begins the historic work of resurrecting the federal government as a force for shaping an America that accords basic protections to all Americans, that he, like FDR before him, employs his gift for oratory in making people understand that predatory 'tooth in claw capitalism’ that cheerfully throws millions of Americans under the bus or out on the street, is not the true expression of American patriotism. If our new president doesn’t succeed in making that case, he is not going to succeed in doing anything else. Now is not the time to be bashful in advocating on behalf of a compassionate and inclusive expression of American patriotism that will allow all of us--including disaffected liberals like me--truly revel in the unabashed love for America we feel deep in our guts.

report on the Weekend of Twinning of Mosques and Synagogues Across North America

2008-12-16T04:34:00.001-08:00

See below text of a speech I gave at Reform Congregation Kenesseth Israel in suburban Philadelphia on the recent Weekend of Twinning of Mosques And Synagogues Across North America, held November 21-23. The event was a great triumph for the premise that American Jews and Muslims can build an alliance based on friendship and trust that will be a win/win for both communities. It was also a great moment for me as the principle organizer of the twinnings around the continent. The speech gives a good précis of the impact on thousands of people around the country.
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We have just came through a thrilling experience, part of an ongoing process which we believe we will fundamentally change Jewish-Muslim relations in North America for the better, During the weekend of November 21-23, 50 mosques and synagogues across North America twinned with each other….There were twinnings in 20 states and the province of Ontario—from New Haven, to New York City Long Island and Westchester, County, NY, north and central New Jersey to Pennsylvania; your own Reform Congregation Knesseth Israel twinning with the Islamic Society of South Jersey to Baltimore and suburban Washington to Charlotte, Atlanta, West Palm Beach, Dallas, Columbus, Ohio, Detroit, Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Denver, Seattle, the San Francisco Bay area and Greater LA.

The word ‘historic’ gets thrown around a lot, but the fact of the matter is that never before has there been such a large-scale event linking Jews and Muslims across North America, or for that matter anywhere in the world.

The Weekend of Twinning was sponsored by my agency, the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, with the endorsement of the World Jewish Congress, Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Canadian Association of Jews and Muslims. The theme of the Weekend of Twinning was confronting ‘Islamophobia and anti-Semitism Together’ and most congregations dealt with that issue but with many others as well. In the past two weeks, I have been calling participants around the country to get their assessments and what has come through more than anything else has been the joy of mutual discovery. When Muslims came to the synagogue and had the chance to listen to a Jewish service or Jews to the mosque to listen to a Muslim one or in the discussions that ensued during the Weekend of Twinning, they have come away amazed by the similarities, by the sense of common themes, customs and beliefs.

Providentially, given the Torah portion of the week, a lot of the discussion focused on the beginning of our people’s troubled relationship, the story Abraham, Sarah and Hagar and of Isaac and Ishamel coming together to bury Abraham. In a number of cities, there were moving discussions of about the meaning of the story of Ishmael and Isaac coming together to bury Abraham, their father, and people reflected as to how Abraham would have felt knowing having two estranged sons and imagined what his hopes would have been for the future of his descendants. The common feeling was that he would have wanted our peoples to reconcile and that his descendants living today—Jews and Muslims right here in North America, in suburban Philadelphia and south Jersey—have a unique opportunity to begin that process.

I want to read you a statement by Samira Kanji of the Noor Cultural Center in Toronto that I believe gives voice to the sense of accomplishment, excitement and even euphoria felt in many mosques and synagogues across North America. Ms. Kanji wrote after the event;

I think we're all of a mind on the amazing reception that we've seen from our community members to our twinning programs. Clearly, the yearning for reaching out and finding amity is great, sitting so close under the surface that it needed just the tiniest little raindrop of facility to bring such a burst of enthusiasm. All of us marveled at the display of warmth on both sides at every level… There is no dearth of interfaith dialogues taking place all over, but I imagine very few of them bring about actual engagement where it matters - within members of communities. Our twinning with one another was felicitous, in that it produced a program that I believe yields great promise for a new kind of relationship within our estranged family.”

My fiancé Tatyana and I had the chance to have Shabbat dinner now with Rabbi Sussman, and I was delighted to hear how well your own program went. The idea of an exhibition of calligraphic art in the Jewish and Islamic traditions is an exciting one, showing again the commonality that Jews and Muslims are finding in so many areas, such as dietary laws, laws concerning burial and so many others.

In opening event in Los Angeles, which I attended, at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, there were Jewish and Muslim prayer services during the event and Jews were welcome to watch or even participate in the Muslim services and vice versa. I attended the Muslim services—honestly I was the only Jew who chose to take part—but there must have been as many as 50 watching—and the Muslims, who came from a somewhat conservative, Saudi-funded mosque called the King Fahd Mosque, told me afterwards how incredibly moved they were to be holding their service in a synagogue –to be so warmly welcomed and received—none that I spoke with had ever been in a synagogue before. For their part Jews said they were fascinated to observe Muslim prayer for the first time and how right it felt to them that it was happening in their home and how much they look forward to visiting and praying in the King Fahad Mosque. And scores of members of both mosque and synagogue have begun an ongoing discussion as to how to move forward.
Here are some of the practical results that came out of the Weekend of Twinning:

• In St. Louis, Congregation Brith Shalom Knesseth Israel and Dar-ul-Islam Mosque promised to work together in the future for vigorous prosecution of hate crimes and to explore other venues for joint participation in the political process.
• The Jam-e-Masjid Islamic Center of Boonton N,J. and Temple B’nai Or of Morristown said that based on sense of commonality coming out of discussion on Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, they inted not only to work together in that field, but also to work together on county wide issues—poverty and better zoning
• At USC—The Jewish and Muslim students pledged to each other not to invite speakers by either community that would be hurtful to the other side. We will consult with each other before tendering such invitations. This is significant and hopefully can become a model for other campuses across the country, where invitations to controversial speakers by one side or the other often becomes flashpoints for confrontations.
• At NYU—Jewish and Muslim students dressed in each other’s clothing for several days and walked around campus disguised as the Other to see what kind of feelings that brought up. One Jewish young man of about 21 who said he plans to become a rabbi spent two days in full Islamic regalia, and told young Jews and Muslims gathered for a debriefing that he felt shame and hurt at the sarcastic comments he heard from his friends, who laughingly asked him how it felt to play ‘terrorist’ and other such remarks. I asked the young man whether he felt hurt as a Jew or a Muslim and he replied as some of both. He said he was hurt that Jews would commonly make bigoted comments seeing Muslims in such dress, and that until two years ago, when he took part in a spring break trip of Muslim and Jewish students to New Orleans to build houses together for Katrina victims and in the process came to know and like many Muslim students--he would have done so himself. And a Muslim girl, born and bred in Pakistan said something almost identical about her own experience dressed as a Jew.

So we had an inspiring breakthrough. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves that all opposition to Muslim-Jewish rapprochement have disappeared. There are powerful people out there like Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson who assert that we should treat all American Muslims as potentially dangerous. They portray the pro-peace, pro-engagement message being articulated by groups like ISNA, MPAC and the Fiqh Council of America as a kind of ‘soft jihad’ to lull America into complacency. And most outrageously they continue to insist that the American Muslim leader with whom we are working do not oppose Islamic terrorism and will not say so explicitly, although I personally have heard many of them say so openly and explicitly multiple times.

These people, who use McCarthyist smear tactics and guilt by association, essentially oppose treating American Muslims like full citizens who deserve all civil and human rights and to whom we as Jews should reach out, as we reach out to Catholics, Protestants, blacks, Hispanics and all other people. And they have been ferociously attacking Rabbi Schneier and the whole twinning process in op-eds and e-mail campaigns ever since.

Pipes and Emerson are hardly alone. There are many in the Jewish community, including people in powerful and influential communal positions who share this perspective. Others ridicule the effort by FFEU, the Union of Reform Judaism and other groups to American Muslims, saying what we are engaged in is meaningless ‘kumbaya’, which has little significance in the real world because we don’t focus on the issue of Israel and the Palestinians and don’t get the Muslims to declare themselves Zionists and sing ‘Hatikvah’. Now, it is true that we choose not to focus on the ‘800 pound elephant in the room’ as people have rightly referred to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, although it is not true to say that we are hiding from it or denying its existence. In the guidelines I sent to participating mosques and synagogues, I said it was totally appropriate to acknowledge the existence of the conflict and the pain we all feel about the violence and suffering endured by our Israeli and Palestinian brothers and sisters, but that the conflict should not become the focus of the twinning because it would be a source of dissension and discord and it would prevent us from making progress on building ties of mutual respect and trust between Jews and Muslims in North America.

But let me directly address the ‘kumbaya’ issue. In truth, the blossoming Jewish-Muslim relationship in North America is not about kumbaya or about wooly headed liberalism on either side. I have been accused on occasion of being a wooly headed liberal myself and would plead more or less guilty as charged—although I’m less wooly headed than I used to be, but I can assure you that neither Rabbi Marc Schneier or Ronald Lauder fits that bill. No, this relationship is growing because, in a very tachlis sense, it is a ‘win win’ for both communities.

How so? For the Muslims, it is important because they need protection—proteksia—from efforts to strip them of their full rights as U.S. citizens, and the support of American Jews can be critical in blowing those attacks out of the water. But why, you may ask, is Muslim-Jewish raproachment good for the Jews? The answer should be obvious, but is lost on too many in our community. If you treat a whole community like potential criminals, some of them, particularly the young, may decide that since they are doomed to be treated as terrorists they might as well become terrorists. But if you treat them as full members of society with every prospect of advancement, they have every impetus to embrace America and its promise.

Depending on the estimate, there are 3-5 Muslims in this country. Since 9-11, tougher immigration regulations has no doubt slowed the inflow, but no one is suggesting that they be expelled. So they are here on a permanent basis. Therefore, we have a fateful choice; either help them to integrate like every other immigrant group that has come to America, to make sure they have a stake in the American dream, or risk happening here what has happened in Britain, Spain, France and other countries where large Muslim populations are not able to integrate with the ease they have here—horrific acts of terrorism committed by home grown terrorists, who became so embittered by the perceived lack of opportunity to become full Britons, Frenchmen and Spaniards, that they turned on their own countries. And for that to happen would NOT be good for the Jews—especially given the special animosity of Muslim extremists toward the Jews because of Israel-Palestine, which we saw exhibited with such horror by the terrorists in Mumbai.

Thankfully, survey after survey has shown that American Muslims want to be both American and Muslim. They do not see the two identities as incompatible at all; they do not see Islam as opposed to democracy. Our job should be to help them in that effort for their and for our own. I believe the two communities will be able to do a lot together with much more effectiveness on a host of issues than they can do on their own. Jews and Muslims making common cause has a ‘wow’ factor to it that can accrue to our benefit on many issues such as:
1. Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. It is not news and has little impact when the ADL denounces anti-Semitism. It IS news when a mosque and synagogue do so together and denounce Islamophobia as well. Not the least of it is confronting Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in our own communities; getting Jews to acknowledge that Islamophobia exists and is a real problem for American society and equally as important, getting Muslims to acknowledge the existence of anti-Semitism and pledge to combat it, instead of saying fliply, ‘We can’t be anti-Semites, because we are Semites ourselves.’ Getting Muslims to acknowledge and oppose anti-Semitism is a huge step forward and it happened repeatedly during the WOT in dozens of cities across North America.
There are so many other issues we can confront together; health care, immigration, housing---we all have stakes in fighting these. So, let us form alliances through a group like Habitat for Humanity to build houses together for the homeless and for victims of foreclosure. The students from NYU started their warm relationship two years ago by travelling together during spring break to New Orleans to work together building houses for those who lost their homes to Katrina. As a result they formed a bond that allowed them two years later to feel safe enough to don each others’ clothing, to share intimate thoughts and to relate to each other to the amazing extent they have come to do so.
Let’s repeat that all over North America…
I believe we North American Jews and Muslims have a moral obligation to come together as friends and allies and work together for the betterment of our two communities and for American society as a whole. And in the process we will be making a statement that will impact our brothers and sisters in Israel and Palestine—that Muslims and Jews can learn to like and trust each other. And if we can do it, in time, so can they. Despite 100 years of conflict, they don’t have to remain enemies forever; they don’t have to sacrifice the next generation and the one after that to death and violence. As Theodore Herzl said in another, but connected, context, ‘If we will it is no dream.’

It took 100 years and more for Jewish-Muslim relations to reach this level of hostility, and it may take 100 years to reverse the damage, but let us resolve to commence this long uplifting journey today. For the sake of our own children and of the children of Israel, we can do nothing less.

VICTORY OF OBAMA, A SALUTE TO BROOK-KRASNY AND KAGAN FOR COMING TOGETHER, AND WHAT THEY SHOULD DO TOGETHER NEXT

2008-11-08T17:43:00.000-08:00

Dear All,
Consider this the re-launch of Rubyjewsday. I have been overwhelmed in recent months organizing the upcoming Weekend of Twinning of mosques and synagogues Across North America, which will bring together more than 40 synagogues and 40 mosques that weekend to hold one on one discussions on the theme of Confronting Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. I’ll be posting more on the Weekend of Twinning during the days ahead. But I’ve missed doing the blog and my batteries feel re-charged, so without further ado---I’m back.
What can I say about the election victory of Barack Obama that hasn’t already been said? It’s an overwhelmingly powerful moment for me. I was there in Chicago in 1968 as an 18-year-old volunteer for Eugene McCarthy watching with horror as the Chicago police in Grant Park beat the shit out of young people who had turned out to protest Hubert Humphrey’s getting the nomination without winning one primary—and thus destroy the Democratic Party that year and help Richard Nixon to the presidency, the beginning of 40 years of Republican political domination—my entire adult life. Sure, there were breaks in the GOP control for Carter and Clinton, but they managed to win only because they were southerners who did not dare to challenge the basic Republican assumptions, mainly that government cannot do too much on behalf of people in need.
And suddenly, here were Barack and hundreds of thousands of jubilant supporters in the very same Grant Park celebrating the victory of an unabashed northern liberal who also happens to be a black man. 40 biblical years on the wilderness were at last over. Crosby, Stills and Nash wrote in their song Long Time Gone back in 1970 about the Nixonian conservatism/quasi-fascism of the time that it had been “A long time coming, and it will be a long time gone…a long, long time before the dawn. Unfortunately that turned out to be prophetic. And I feel deeply blessed that I was privileged to live long enough to see the dawn—and that night watching Grant Park with tears running down my cheeks, I found myself, a confirmed non-believer, reciting the Schechiyanu prayer, "Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion."
I remembered too being nine years old, having just arrived in Virginia on a family trip from our home in Pittsburgh to Tennessee, heading for the bathroom and being flabbergasted to see four bathrooms marked “white men”, “white women”, “colored men”, “colored women”. This was in 1959, not 1859. And then I recalled all the memories of the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960’s, including a heaven-sent opportunity to hear Martin Luther King speak at an anti-Vietnam War rally in Chicago in 1966. To have lived through all of that and then witnessing something I never expected to see in my lifetime; a black man elected President of the United States. It is powerful and profound in ways I can’t begin to articulate. This event somehow validates the struggles of my entire generation—often seemingly in vain—to make this country a more just and kinder place. History works in amazing ways.
Not only do we have a young African-American president, but someone who is incredibly bright, disciplined and committed to all the ideals that have been trampled into the mud for 40 years. Obviously, he will be initially limited in the changes he can make because of the terrible economic crisis the country confronts. On the other hand, the very depth of that crisis and the need for results, may force him to choose a course that will be more New Deal than New Democrat a la Bill Clinton. He can rescue the auto industry by jump starting a massive effort to build green cars and get us off fossil fuels. Obama can’t afford to delay health care, because the absence of decent heath care for tens of millions of Americans deepens the economic crisis. Obama faces an enormously difficult set of challenges, but he can’t hope to succeed by following conservative council to slow down and take half steps. He has to go for it. Wed can only pray he and his team are up to the occasion.
On a local note, I was happy to witness recently the joint press conference of Alec Brook-Krasny and Ari Kagan announcing their reconciliation and new partnership. It was great to see this belated coming together two years after their bitter Democratic primary battle barely won by Alec, who subsequently went on to win the State Assembly seat. He has done a first rate job since then bringing money into the district and Ari was wise to see that there was no point challenging him further and perpetuating a bitter rift in the Russian community. Reconciling, as I urged them in a whole series of postings on rubyjewsday two years ago will likely give Ari a political future—although probably not next year because of the shabby deal Bloomberg and the City Council made to give each other another term in office.
The Russian community is blessed to have two such capable and fundamentally decent political leaders. What I would like to see the two of them do now is to ‘educate’ that section of the community that responded to Obama with horror—sometimes in openly racist language, more often in coded racist language—that he represented a death threat to Israel and that his victory would inspire young black thugs from Coney Island and elsewhere to launch violent attacks on elderly Russians in Coney Island and Brighton Beach.
Brook-Krasny was careful not to endorse Obama even though I understood from an interview with him a few weeks back that he was inclined to support him but could not say so because of the intense antipathy in the Russian community, whereas Ari told me he would likely vote for McCain out of fear for what Obama might mean for Israel. Still, neither Ari nor Alec are anti-black (They have both worked hard to form alliances with black political leaders and community activists in Coney Island) and they now need to step up efforts to educate the community to stop hunkering down fearfully in its Brighton-Manhattan Beach bunker and start reaching out to the communities around them, black and Pakistaniu Muslim among others.
A Russian Jewish friend said to me recently that he and his ancestors were not guilty of causing slavery in America and therefore he is not responsible for healing the racial divide that has existed in America for 400 years. My response is that healing the racial divide is a responsibility of all Americans, not only those whose ancestors were here in 1865. The Russian Jews living here chose to move to America and become American citizens (they could have stayed in the FSU or moved to Israel) and by doing so they and their children inherited not only all the good things about America, but also a responsibility for helping heal our country of its injustices. I very much hope Alec Brook-Krasny and Ari Kagan will use their soapboxes to challenge the Russian community to change attitudes that are frankly, bigoted and anti-American. One Russian Jewish man in his 60’s I interviewed on the Boardwalk in early October told me, “I am voting for McCain because the President should be nastiyashe Amerikanetz—a real American”. Ari, Alex, please tell the community that Barack Obama is nastayashe Amerikanetz, just as much as any white person, or any Jew. And make the same point to those who listen to you that Colin Powell made recently; that while Obama is not a Muslim, so what if he were? An American Muslim is every bit as much an American as an American Jew or Christian. And we have a moral imperative as Jews to reach out to them and build connections—just as we do to blacks.
Anyway, it’s a moment of great happiness for me to welcome Obama’s election. I only hope more of my Russian Jewish brothers and sisters will come to understand how wonderful a day it is to see a person of Obama’s intelligence and moral integrity win the presidency.

King Abdullah's Perestroika Moment

2008-07-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

See below my report on the recent Saudi sponsored World Conference on Dialogue in Madrid entitled King Abdullah's Perstroika Moment. I attended in the capacity of Muslim-Jewish Program Officer at the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.

This is a slightly extended version of the story that runs in this week's New York Jewish Week.

the photo is of (l) Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, head of the Fiqh Council of North America (the highest body of Islamic jurisprudence in North America, and Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding presenting a print ad to King Abdullah showing six American rabbis and six American imams denouncing Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism.

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK
KING ABDULLAH’S PERESTROIKA MOMENT
By Walter Ruby
MADRID---

Attending the Saudi-sponsored World Conference On Dialogue which ended here July 18, and listening to a panoply of high level Saudi officials espouse mutual acceptance among religions and the necessity of opening their country up to the rest of the world, left me with the odd sensation of having been a bit player in this movie before.
Indeed, as a Moscow-based correspondent just under 20 years ago, I witnessed the dizzying changes wrought by perestroika; the historical process initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev and his fellow ‘inside the Kremlin revolutionaries’ that transformed, and eventually dissolved, the Soviet Union. Flash forward to Madrid, 2008 and I had the unmistakable sensation of encountering Perestroika 2.1; this time championed by an 84-year-old monarch, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, who is the standard bearer of a political elite that clearly believes the hidebound Saudi system must reform itself from within if it is to survive the pressures of globalization.
The analogy between the two reform efforts is hardly exact; starting with the fact that Abdullah was careful to hold the conference, the first such Saudi-sponsored encounter with the world’s other major faiths, in Madrid, rather than at home in Riyadh, where opposition to his initiative by influential members of the ultra-conservative Wahabi religious establishment is reported to be intense. And yet the flavor of perestroika was manifest throughout Madrid proceedings as Saudi officials from Abdullah on down advocated a dialogue of equals among the world’s faiths, including with Jews, a people labeled only three years ago as “the brothers of apes and pigs,” by a prominent Muslim cleric on Saudi state television.
Abdullah is said to have decided to get involved personally in building bridges between religions after having being urged to do so by Pope Benedict XVI during a meeting in the Vatican last year. The king then signaled his determination to push forward by holding a conference of 700 top Muslim clerics and scholars in Mecca in early June, which ended with a proclamation urging dialogue among the world’s faiths.
Opening the conference alongside King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero at a royal palace on the edge of Madrid, selected for its isolation by the security-conscious Spaniards, Abdullah, who appeared animated and vigorous despite his age, said he had come to proclaim a message that “Islam is a religion of moderation and tolerance; a message that calls for constructive dialogue among followers of religions; a message that promises to open a new page for humanity in which – God willing – concord will replace conflict.” The same message ran through all of the deliberations of the conference including a final communiqué issued by the Muslim World League (MWL), the Saudi-created and Mecca-based body that ran the conference, which called for “unified international efforts to combat terrorism” and urged Muslims and non-Muslims alike “to reject theories that call for the clash of civilizations."
Former British Prime Minister and International Middle East envoy Tony Blair told the Jewish Week, “This is hugely important event; the first time that Jews, as well as Christians and other religions, have been welcomed to a religious dialogue sponsored by the Saudis.”
Some 35 Jewish leaders, mostly from the U.S., running the gamut from impeccably establishment figures like Rabbi Arthur Schneier, the only Jewish leader who was given the privilege of offering an address from the podium, to more fringy types like Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine, were among the 200 delegates representing not only the three Abrahamic faiths, but also Eastern religions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism.
Dr. Abdullah Al-Turki, Secretary-General of the MWL, stressed to this reporter that “We hold Judaism as a religion in the highest regard,” adding, “This conference is not about politics but about accentuating the common human dimension shared by all religions…” True to his word, Al-Turki worked assiduously to keep all mention of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict out of the proceedings, a task made easier by the almost complete absence of Israeli and Palestinian representatives.
One of the few moments of discord came when Dr. Ezzeddin Ibrahim, religious adviser to the Emir of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed, and a top official in the MWL, asserted from the podium that, in contrast to years of discussions between Christian and Muslim theologians, “There is no dialogue between Jews and Muslims.” That bald assertion brought retorts from Rabbi Marc Schneier, chairman of the World Jewish Congress-American Section and Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi of Los Angeles, chairman of the leading body of Islamic Jurisprudence in North America, who pointed to the work that they and other groups, like the Union of Reform Judaism, have been doing in recent months to strengthen Jewish-Muslim relations in the U.S. and Canada. Ibrahim graciously acknowledged that he had misspoken and promised that Jews will be represented on a committee that will to be set up by the MWL to recommend steps to follow up the Madrid conference.
Dr.Saleh Al-Namlah, Deputy Minister of Culture and Information, observed in an interview; “Historically, Islam is a moderate religion and our King is reaffirming that tradition by opening a dialogue between decent people of faith from all the great religions. We are determined to prevent extremists from hijacking Islam.” Al-Namleh said the conference might not lead to immediate results, but added, “We are engaged in a process of reform, not one or two shots. We are educating ourselves and others on the importance of dialogue and understanding.”
Robert Lacey, author of The Kingdom (1981), who is now working on a new book on Saudi Arabia, told me that things have changed dramatically in that country since Abdullah took over in 2006, but there remains strong resistance to the King’s reform efforts from within the Wahabi religious establishment. Noting that only two out of the 24 members of the Ulema, the highest body of Saudi clerics, were in attendance in Madrid, a sure sign of disapproval of Abdullah’s initiative, Lacey said, “There is no question that this conference is a decisive break between the king and the religious conservatives and no one knows how that will play out back home.” Still, Lacey asserted, the King’s hand is strengthened by “the enormous popularity among the Saudi masses of his reform agenda,” including allowing elections to municipal councils and making it easier for women to work. Nevertheless, he emphasized, all bets are off as to whether the reform trend will continue after Abdullah dies because several of his would-be successors from within the royal family are far more conservative than he is.
No one articulated the spirit of Saudi perestroika better than the father and son team of Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah, vice president of the Jeddah-based International Union of Muslim Scholars and his thirty-something son, Cheikhna Bin Bayyah, who divides his time between business operations in ‘the Kingdom’ and his duties as executive director of the Global Center for Renewal and Guidance in London.
The elder Bin Bayyah, who, like Abdullah Al-Turki and other members of the older generation wore a long flowing robe and keffiyeh, remarked, “Without a doubt, there are a lot of influential people opposed to what the King is doing, but after participating in this historic event, I feel confident that there is no turning back.” Cheikhna Bin Bayyah, who was clad in a stylish business suit, looks forward to the day when he will enjoy the same freedom of expression in Jeddah as he does in London. “What is happening today in Saudi society is a badly needed paradigm shift related to the age of globalization”, he said. “People like my father understand the need to open things up, so let them get on with the task. If they don’t get the job done, my generation is going to step forward and do it for them.”
-end-

responses to my readers, including Locke and Greg

2008-06-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

Here are some recent responses to my "Obama: The Audacity of Racism" piece. (the postings I am responding to are below what I am writing here). I promise that the next time I write it will be on another subject but want to pick up on some of this stuff.

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Locke wrote:
Anonymous said...
C'mon, guys, Wright is a non-issue; if we were judged on our clergy's pronouncements, none should 'scape whipping.

The concerns, as I see them, fall into a number of categories:

(1) "Is a black man smart enough to run this country" -- is possibly an issue far in the babushka land (either meaning of the word 'babushka' being aceptable), but not in the real world where we have all had persons of color operate on us, fix our cars, get us out of jail, etc. Johnny Cochrane, Colin Powell and Condi Rice are the most conspicuous examples of African-Americans who are clearly more competent than most of their white competitors.

(2) "Is he going to bring back affirmative action with a vengeance" (or skew immigration policies in favor of persons of color, or otherwise out-Johnson Johnson and out-Carter Carter) -- is a valid concern but we are told by knowledgeable Illini that he showed no evidence of having ever moved in that direction.

(3) "Is he going to shake hands with Chavez and Nasralla and Ahmadinejad?" -- I hope he does, as he tells them with that winsome smile of his just how far up their butts he will shove the bull we have been putting up with all these years.

(4) "Is he going to wreck the economy?" -- sorry, can't do that any better than the current administration;

(5) "Is he going to allow our allies to fall?" (again, out-Johnson Johnson and out-Carter Carter) -- tough call, I'm willing to trust him so far.

I really think Obama will do well in our community, especially if he bothers to speak to us -- not that he will need our vote to swing the state, New York is his unless tsunami wipes out all but Adirondacks...

Locke
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Locke, our enlightened capitalist is much more reasoned in his posting. As Locke poins out, Obama is constrained in many ways in terms of the changes he can make--not the least by the Republicans stripping all the money in the Federal Treasury for taxc cuts for the rich and the War in Iraq, and he will probably end up disappointing those of us thirsty for fundamental change. I was glad to hear Locke's opinion that Obama could end up doing relatively well in the Russian community and will urge his people to make an effort at outreach. Certain, there seems to be a dividing line between generations here--in the Russian community as well as elsewhere, and on the issue of how 'Americanized' members of the community have become. But take it from Locke, friends, Obama in the White House is not going to unleash the barbarians at the gate into the cozy confines of Brighton.

Walter
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Greg said...
Walter, Hi from the Jewish Russian Telegraph (http://www.jrtelegraph.com).
Here is what I posted in response to your post:
Our friend Walter Ruby, of Ruby's Jewsday is writing about Obama, Israel and Russian Jews. Walter is our true friend, please be polite if you decide to comment on his post. This said his writing is very typical of an American Jewish liberal who approaches world conflicts as a fight between the boys in a seventh grade of a public school in a good neighborhood. You see, Palestinians and Israelis are having problems. Probably because they did not receive proper sensitivity training. Now, this is not good! They have to make up right away! American diplomats have to play a role of a wise teacher -- walking into a room, stopping a fight and making bad boys to behave. His friends, Russian Jews, are warm, intelligent people but they are SOO entrenched in their antiquated cold war attitudes. Definitely not nuanced and sophisticated. Walter, mon ami! chaver sheli! amigo! These people want us DEAD! Don't take our word for it -- just pay attention to what they are saying themselves.
Nobody is planning to leave you to visit Maale Adumim. As a matter of fact, nobody is planning to leave you alone in NYC either. American Jews are such nice people. If only they could grow up beyond middle school.
Best regards!

-- Greg
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Greetings to my friend Greg, the editor of the Jewish Russian Telegraph in Boston. I wrote a piece a couple of years ago tweaking the Boston Jewish establishment for ignoring the opinions of Russian Jews, including Greg and others involved in the Jewish Russian Telegraph. I have long tradition of criticizing the American Jewish establishment for imposing its writ and will on Russian Jews going back to the 1980's when the heads of American Jewish establishment groups used to decide policy on Soviet Jewry in consultation with Washington and Jerusalem (and sometimes after negotiations in the Kremlin) without consulting the brave refuseniks and Prisoners of Zion whose asses were literally on the line. That same kind of arrogance and paternalism by both the government of Israel and the American Jewish establishment continued after hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews emigrated here, and over a million to Israel and has had the unfortunate but predictable impact of confirming many Russian Jews in hard line positions vis a vis Israeli-Palestinian peace and on domestic issues in this country.

Greg, who is a mensch of a human being and puts out Jewish Russian Telegraph as a labor of love, takes the usual tact that us American Jews live in dreamland and dont understand that "These people want us dead." Who are 'these people" Greg? All Arabs? All Muslims? And how many Arabs and Muslims do you know well enough to have come to a sweeping conclusion like that?

Last month I spent a week in Jordan at an interfaith conference including some prominent American and Israeli rabbis, Not only did nobody try to kill us, but they wined and dined us at fancy clubs where wine was discreetly present. Also, they are signing on to a new Israeli-Jordanian-American plan to get hearing aids to poor Jordanian children whose parents would not otherwise be able to afford them. Jordaina-Israeli trade blossoms and grows despite a not very good political situation.

In my other kippah, as Muslim-Jewish Relations Program Officer for the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding (www.ffeu.org), I am involved in the implementation of a "Weekend of Twinning of Mosques and Synagogues Across America on November 21-23. The subject that will be discussed in as many as 50 mosques and 50 synagogues across the U.S. and Canada that day will be "Confronting Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism Together." And I can say that in over 100 phone and face to face conversations I have had with American imams and mosque leaders over the past month in planning this event, I have not had one person reject this idea and tell me that he wants to kill me or that the Jew is the eternal enemy and the Muslims should have no contact with us. Na'abarot, on the contrary, I have received a very warm reception and over 20 mosques have already signed on to participate (many others are in the process of signing on). Sure there are small groups of radicals out there, but the vast majority of American Muslims are anxious to join the mainstream of American society and they see that mainstream Jews can be allies in this regard.

Aha, I hear Greg snorting, that is because you American are such "useful idiots" in Lenin's term. We Russian Jews are so much more aware of how hard the real workd really is. Except, Greg, with due respect, I know many many more Arabs and Muslims than you do and maybe some of that experience has some relevance to the question as to who better understands the Arabs and Muslim, you or I. I would submit that the world of the Jewish Russian Telegraph is NOT the real world, but some cartoon variant thereof, a black and white pastiche of good guys and bad guys based on outdated perceptions formed in Soviet times that have little relationship to the real world of the 21st Century.

In the real world, you cant beat 1.2 billion Muslims into submission; you have to reach out to the moderates who reject the medieval visions of Bin-Laden and his ilk, and who dont want to live under the morals police of Al-Queda, Hamas or Hazbollah. Israel is belatedly waking up to the reality that trying to destroy Hamas by sealing off Gaza and punishing its people has had exactly the opposite impact, just as the American project of colonizing Iraq created aradical upsurge in that country and across the Islamic world. But I doubt Greg and the Jewish Russian Telegraph team has woken up to these realities yet. For them, there can only be one policy; silnaya ruka, force and more force. The policy posiitons he is proposing represent an absolute dead end for Israel and the Jews.

Best,

Walter

6:17 PM

Obama and other matters

2008-06-08T03:43:00.000-07:00

Friends,
Sorry over long silence after writing such an inflamatory piece last time. After that, I left for a fascinating interfaith conference in Amman, Jordan which I will write about tomorrow. But as to my last piece, I wrote it and felt it was an important and timely message for the Russian Jewish community to ponder, but am sorry in retrospect that I started with the anecdote about my friend, because she was deeply hurt by what I wrote. Making a political point doesn't feel worth screwing up a friendship of several years. I feel very sad about that.

But now that Obama has won the nomination and millions of Americans are feeling inspired by the possibility of transformative politics in America for the first time since 1968 (Talk about 40 years in the wilderness!), it really makes me sad to think of so many Russian Jews being fearful that Obama represents a grave threat to their security or to Israel's security. Nothing can be further from the truth, as should have been made clear by Obama's AIPAC speech, which to my mind went too far into pandering, as all candidates do every four years when trying to cater to the Jewish community and other powerful constituencies. The bottom line is that Obama is committed to Israel's security, but yes, he would likely pick up where Bill Clinton left off eight years ago and push and prod Israel and the Palestinians to reach a peace agreement(something Mc Cain would undoubtedly do as well). Why? Because the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is bad for America, a spur to Islamic fundamentalism and therefore bad for Israel as well).

In the end, there is going to be a peace settlement in which Israel gives up most of the West Bank and allows some Palestinian sovereignity in East Jerusalem in exchange for a Palestinian committment to demilitarization and an ongoing international security presence in its territory. Israel will keep the larger settlements blocs like Ma'ale Adumim, Gush Etzion and perhaps Ariel and give up land adjoining the West Bank in return. The rest of the settlments will have to be evacuated. Everyone knows that will be the final settlement; the question is whether we move in that direction expeditiously or drag it out over another decade or two of violence, as Bush allowed to happen. Which is better for Israel and the Jews? The hard line perscription favored by many in the Russian Jewish community will only result in several generations more of violence and killing. It is easy to sit in NY and insist that Israelis should be uncompromising, because it is they and not us who will have to pay the price.

As to the domestic front, Obama will embark on an effort to return our politics to the work of tikkun olam (healing the world), by providing increased funding for the weakest in society (including elderly Russian Jews now barely surviving on small monthly SSI payments that dont even cover the cost of rent, let along incidentials like electrity, airconditioning and food). He will try to bring us something approaching universal health care and do something about the soaring cost of college, home foreclosures and rising interest rates. Mc Cain's perscription is the same as Republicans always give us--leave it to the magic of the market, the wonders of private enterprise--and everything will be fine and dandy. Right! That perfect perspcription must be why the economy is doing so well at the moment after 8 years of unregulated capitalism, with all protections for consumers and the environment stripped away. With all of his militaristic bravado and throwing alway hundreds of billions of dollars in the sands of Iraq, all Bush has accomplished is to spur Islamic fundamentalism, turn the U.S. into a debtor nation with a devalued currency that now has to kiss up to China, Saudi Arabia, Putin's Russia and other assorted petrorich thuggish states. But, hey, If you are happy with the state of America after eight years of Bush, if you think those policies really protect yourself and your loved ones, including aging parenets, then vote for another four years of the same. I doubt too many Russian Jews really feel that way.

So why are so many Russian Jews allergic to Obama? Because he feels to them as 'the Other'; a biracial guy with African roots, raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, exposed to Islam along the way...in other words, not a representative of the white-bread Reaganesque America they thought they were emigrating to (actually, that white bread America hasnt really existed since the 1950's, Reagan was an actor evoking mass nostalgia for an illusion). Obama is a 'world' candiate, evoking a 21st century reality of 'We are all in this together' and only the kind of compassionate inclusive politics he represents has a chance of salvaging America and the world, to take on the enormous challenge of global warming which is imperilling the very survival of our planet.

Do Russian Jews really want to go into the bunker with the likes of Rush Limbaugh and crazy, evolution-denying right wing evangelicals like Rev. Hagee who believe God commissioned Hitler to kill six million so that Jews would move to Israel? Mc Cain is not as bad as many Republicans, but the reality is that he is the captive of the right-wingers who dominate his party,and, if elected, would not be able to break with the main contours of their politics even if he wanted to. So his election would mean a locking in of Bush's tax cuts for the rich, which pushed this coubtry into debt and destroyed the ability of the government to raise the funds needed to help the struggling poor and middle class. That means more ultra-right Supreme Court justices, who will outlaw abortion, take away all consumer protections and protections for the rights of minorities, including immigrants.

Are there risks for the Jews in Obama's call to transform our society in a direction of social justice and more equal distribution of resources. Sure, change is always risky. Mistakes will be made along the way. But the alternative, four more years of catastrophic policies that have run this country into a ditch, is much, much riskier and much more dangerous for the Jews and for all of us. It is time for us as Jews to again join hands with our fellow Americans who are black, Hispanic, Asian and white to create an America and a world based on the values of cooperation and kindness rather than unbridled competition and definitely crouching in separate ethnic enclaves. And lets stop being so fearful of the idea of change. As Franklin Roosevelt said so many years ago, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Nu, davai, lets join forces with Americans of all backgrounds and contribute to building a healthier society, where people may have less material goods, but are compensated by a sense of common purpose.

Russians and Obama--The Audacity of Racism

2008-05-22T03:59:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago, I had a conversation with a dear Russian Jewish friend, a charming businesswoman, who told me that she happened to discuss Barack Obama during a business conference with a man from Kenya, who told her how proud Kenyans are that a man whose father was from Kenya has a good chance to become President of the United States. I'm not sure how my friend responded to the man from Kenya, but in relating the ancdote to me some days later, she said, "Look, Walter, I didn't emigrate from Russia to America to have a Kenyan as president of the United States."

Let me acknowledge that, to my shame, I didn't respond to my friend's comment, because she happens to be one of my favorite people and I didn't want to damage our relationship at that moment by self-righteously upbraiding her for racism. But of course, I ought to have said something in response, not hectoring or patronizing, but with kindess and affection, to address a comment that was clearly racist, even if she is a delightful person, who I am sure, would never consciously do a mean thing to any person of any color. But after all, why not someone with Kenyan roots as President of the United States as opposed to someone with English or German roots? Because a Kenyan or a half-Kenyan (as in Obama's case) is someone with dark skin.

It s not like my friend's comment was the only remark I have heard from Russian Jews about Obama over the past few months that betrayed racist sentiments. Sometimes , it has been even more overt. When I covered the Democratic primary in a polling station in Brighton Beach on Super Tuesday last February, the Russian Jewish voters I spoke with were voting en masse for Hillary Clinton, and several of them were quite open as to why they were doing so. "Write this down," one middle aged woman told me, "We are all voting for Hillary because she's not black." Another woman told me that Russians fear that if Obama wins, all of America will become like New York under David Dinkins; the blacks will get all arrogant and full of themselves and the police won't do anything about black-on-white crime, such as crime by black teenagers in Coney Island preying on elderly Russians living in the area.

Fear of crime is understandable; crime by blacks against Russian-speakers in Coney Island is a real problem, but the way to deal with it is to work with the police and with the black community leadership in Coney Island that is also committed to fighting crime and is trying to improve conditions in the area for all residents. To his credit, Alec Brook-Krasny, the Russian-speaking State Assemblyman for Brighton Beach and Coney Island, has taken that approach and built strong relationships with black leaders in Coney Island; in the process modelling for his Russian-speaking constituents what a non-racist community outreach approach looks like. But Brook-Krasny and other Russian Jewish community leaders should also speak out at community forums about the wrongness of racism, which runs counter to the ethical values of Judaism and to everything that the Jewish experience in America has been about. Do even one in one hundred Russian Jews know that in the 1960's Jews, in large numbers, left their schools and jobs in the North and went to Alabama and Mississippi; marching and sitting in at lunch counters to end segregation and to win black people the right to vote? Many Jews were beaten by the racist Southern police, and a few, including New Yorkers Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner, were murdered by a posse of Ku Klux Klansmen, along with a black colleague, James Chaney. Russian Jews need to learn more about that history and ponder its meaning.

In the last few months, I have heard repeatedly from Russian Jewish friends, including in discussions on this forum, about how terrible Rev. Wright is and how the fact that he was Obama's pastor is good enough reason to oppose Obama. Yes, Rev. Wright is angry at white America, and in truth, he has every right to be angry. This country kept black people in slavery for 250 years and as second class citizens--really fourth class citizens--for another 100 years after that. So we have a total of 350 years plus of servitude, severe dsicrimination and exploitation, nearly equal to the 400 years the Jews were slaves in Egypt. All I can say to that is that if I was a heir to that tradition, if I were a black American, I wouldn't be shouting, "God Bless America"--I might say, as Rev. Wright did in a moment of righteous anger, "God Damn America" for treating my people with such terrible, implacable cruelty; for perpetrating on African-Americans a horrific experience that can be compared to the Holocaust. A question to my Russian-Jewish friends who remember the bitter experience of living as Jews in the Soviet Union; "Did you shout 'Slava CCCP' when you gathered with friends for honest discussions over tea in the kitchen? Did you feel love in your hearts for Russians and Ukrainians for calling you 'zhid' on the tramvei, or to the wonderful Soviet government for preventing you from attending MGU or some other top university or institute simply because you were Jewish despite the fact that you had the best grades in the class? If not, why do you expect that Rev. Wright or any other black person of his generation who lived through the bad old (and not-so-old) days, to shout 'God Bless America'?

And yet, despite that terrible history, here we have Obama, a member of a new generation of middle-class blacks who have been able to move past the bitterness of the black experience in America, leading a black-white coalition dedicated to opening a new and more hopeful page in American history. The Obama phenonomon and the readiness of millions of white people, especially young people, to support him, is one of the most inspiring moments in recent American history, an important sign that this country is finally starting to move past the horrors of its past and finally, finally beginning to live up to the immortal words of our founding document, the Declaration of Independence that "All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Do you hear that, my dear Russian-speaking friends; my wonderful friends with whom I personally have shared so much life experience? The Declaration of Independence says that ALL men are created equal," including men whose skin color is darker than yours and mine. Since 1776, we've stretched the definition of those who are created equal so that it doesn't just include 'all men', but 'all human beings'. All human beings, male and female, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, rich, poor, gay and straight, all of us are created equal and deserve to be treated and related to as such. We are all brothers and sisters with the same measure of human dignity and human worth. That is what America was supposed to be about from the beginning, and now 232 years too late, but slowly and haltingly with baby steps, American is finally learning to live up to her promise. It is that bedrock belief in human equality and the right of all people to experience the fruits of liberty and justice that ultimately redeems America, that ultimately makes America a good and decent place.

For Russian Jews to experience decades of oppression in the USSR, to struggle to win their freedom and to come to live in a land of liberty, only to tell a reporter, "Write this down, I'm voting for Hillary because she's not black", is a betrayal of the Soviet Jewish fight for freedom. It is a betrayal of the Jewish fight for freedom from the Egyptians at the time of the Exodus. It is a betrayal of basic Jewish values, American values and human values. It makes us no better than the drunken bigot on the tramvei in Moscow or Minsk who sneered, "zhid" at us. If we want freedom and justice for ourselves, we should also want it for all Americans, including our black neighbors in Coney Island.

Sadly, racism is a common human emotion; it can be found among all nations throughout the world. People tend to fear and distrust those with different skin color, different religions, different ethnicities. But racism is an emotion that degrades and banalizes the worth of the person who expresses it, who feels it. To the extent that racism exists in the Russian Jewish community--and I believe any honest person will acknowledge that it exists at an unacceptable level--then we must confront it and fight it. Everything that is wonderful about the Russian-Jewish mindset and ethos--all of the attributes of spontaneity and kindness that I have come to love over the years, is devalued and made worthless by the comment, "I didn't come here to have a Kenyan as president of the United States." Well, sorry, my dear friend, but that is exactly what makes America great, that finally we Americans may be fortunate enough to get a person whose father was a Kenyan and mother was white as President of the United States. To paraphrase the Jewish liturgy, "Thank God that we have survived everything we have been through and lived to see this day."

pogrom in Jabal Mukhaber

2008-03-18T05:29:00.000-07:00

Please read the editorial in today's Haaretz that narrates how the Jerusalem police allowed a group of extreme-right wing youth to break into the Arab neighborhood of Jabal Mukhater, smash windows and damage cars. The residents of the neighborhood sensibly chose to stay in their homes, thereby preventing massive bloodletting between the two groups. The attackers were enraged that the murderer of eight Jewish students at the Mercaz Harav recently came from the enighborhood and that fliers had been pasted up in the area extolling the killing. So because of that, thugs should be given free run of a neighborhood, to threaten terrified men, women and children who had nothing to do with the killing or putting up the leaflets? So that is Jewish justice circa 2008; collective punishment carried out by a mob while the police shamefully look the other way?

As Haaretz notes, how laughable the claim that Arab residents of Jerusalem receive equal protection under the law. Their very lives can be put at risk by young Jewish thugs blowing off steam and the keystone cops of Jerusalem somehow cannot manage to prevent these people from reaching their targets.

As Haaretz notes, if a Jewish neighborhood anywhere in the world had suffered such an attack, Israel and Jewish organizations everywhere would rightfully be shouting that this is intolerable; that an attack on one Jew anywhere is an attack on all Jews everywhere. Yet a pogrom carried out by Jews meets largely with silence with the exception of a few brave voices like Haaretz. Question: What have we as a people come to that we would find such behavior by our own compatriots to be understandable and quasi-acceptable; so understandable and quasi acceptable that the police allow it to happen--just as they have allowed settler hooligans to beat and even kill West Bank Arabs for decades? Where is the Jewish conscience?

Rev. Wright and America's Amnesia

2008-03-14T17:59:00.000-07:00

The radio talk show hosts are up in arms about Rev. Jeremiah's Wright's assorted sermons over the years and poor Barack Obama has to deliver a strong denounciation of his pastor in order to maintain his credibility with the voters in the middle. Some of Wright's gestures have indeed been injudicious--such as his lifetime achievement award to Louis Farrakhan--although most mainstream blacks credit the Nation of Islam for getitng untold thousands of black men off drugs and their lives straightened out.

But, here is what Wright said that forced Barack to pull the plug on him:

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

You know what, a lot of that is true (though I don't know what he meant by 'Its in the Bible.' I guess he means that the Ten Commandments say: 'Thou Shalt Not Kill" and white America has been killing and enslaving and persecuting black people since the first slave ship pulled into Jamestown harbor in 1619). And yes, as Wright said, America does keep building bigher and bigger prisons and has locked up one young black man in 8. Yes indeed America has treated black people as less than human for almost its entire history. It held black people as slaves for 250 years (1619-1865) and then another 100 years of eighth class citizenship with segregation, disenfranchisement and lynchings. Thats 350 years of being treated like shit and only the last 40 years or so trending toward toward equality, that is if you overlook de- facto segreegation, redlining, 'driving while black', the imprisonment of much black youth and so much more.

Indeed, on what basis should a black person say, 'God Bless America'? Should he bless this country for enslaving African-Americans for generations and rendering the lives of countless generations a living hell? Yes, thank God, America is finally, finally beginning to come around, beginning to atone for 350 years of brutal oppression, but it has a very long way to go. And it is very sad and telling that in all the expressions of outrage at Wright and insistence that Obama distance himself, not one commentator I have seen has acknowledged that yes, America enslaved and brutalized black people. Maybe, just maybe, we are about to do something enormously important as a nation and elect a black president. But even if it happens, half of black America will continue to subsist in poverty, despair and isolation from the rest of the country.

So, it is a shame that Barack Obama cant express his real feelings at this moment and say, "I may not agree with everything my pastor has said, but he uttered some powerful truths." The truth is that America still has to pay some heavy debts to its black citizens to the point where many of them will finally be able to say 'God Bless America' and really mean it.http://rubyjewsday.blogspot.com/

Voted for Obama, My Head Triumphant over my Heart

2008-02-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

I literally decided on the way to the booth, having more or less made up my mind last night to go with Hillary because I dont like being part of trends (in this case the surge for Obama with Caroline Kennedy, Maria et al)and because I found myself emotionally torn up and in acute sympathy with Hillary every time I turned on the TV and heard about polls showing Obama surging. Screw it, I said, I may not be able to rationally justify a Hillary vote, but, for whatever reason, I feel great affection for her and thats good enough. So I was 99 percent of the way to a Hillary vote, but it turned out that I had plenty of time to re-think everything because when I arrived at my usual voting place at South Mountain School, I was informed that they had stopped holding elections there a couple of years ago. So I called Millburn Township and was told I was supposed to vote at St. Stephen's Church on Main Street, but when I got there, the volunteers couldnt locate my name and said my polling place was actually the town library.

So the whole riggamarole took almost an hour, and by the time I arrived at the library, I had plenty of time to reconsider and was suddenly grabbed by the consideration that, at least right now, Barack looks more electible against McCain. If the GOPers were about to nominate Romney or some other ultra-righty, then I could afford to vote my heart with Hillary, but given McCain's appeal to independents, Barack's even stronger appeal to same and Hillary being such a catalytic agent in firing up the Republicans, Obama suddenly appeared the only responsible vote. Plus, I totally bought his argument during the last debate that his 'right from the start' stance on the war puts him in a stronger position to push back against McCain's "white flag" demagoguery, while Hillary, having already voted to authorize the war and being afraid of looking soft, might try again to split the difference on the issue and end up prey to the 'flip flopper' charge. So sentimentality out the window and one vote for Obama. But somehow, if she pulls off an upset tonight and wins NJ and other states, I'll actually end up feeling releived. My head says Obama and my heart Hillary, but unlike my feelings concerning Israel, where I give primacy to my heart over my head, on this one I went with what Russians call 'kapilka', i.e. brain cells.

Undecided to the end

2008-02-03T09:23:00.000-08:00

Its less than 48 hours before the NJ primary and I still cant make up my mind between Barack and Hillary. I keep thinking I've decided to go with Obama, and then something pulls me back. Just now it was the thought that Obama has the momentum and the fashionable endorsements, which immediately pushed my thought process in a pro-Hillary direction. The Wolf Blitzer debate in Hollywood confirmed me in the conviction that Hillary has a superb command of the issues--but Obama appeared to be equally strong. I've never seen such two clearly superior candidates debate; nor, for that matter can I remeber an occasion when I found myself unable to make up my mond--meaning I am likely to go into the voting booth undecided. OK--at this point I'm leaning toward Obama, but could well flip at the moment it comes time to flip the lever.

Obama does seem to me to have a slightly better chance to win, although that may simply be because the Republican attack machine has already done its work of trashing her over so many years, whereas they've barely started on Obama yet. I liked very much how he laid out during his debate with Hillary his response to the anticipated (actually already articulated McCain charges of 'waving the white flag' and 'tax and spend liberal'. Hillary has shown to her discredit, especially with her Iraq vote, that she cast votes to look tough so as to be able to fight the GOP in '08. Barrack will stand up for the liberal position and not bend--and believes that will work better politically. We will see, but certainly that unapologetic quality, even as he reaches across the aisle for millions of independents and a few Republicans disenchanted with the Republicans' divide and rule games, is inspiring.

So why am I still undecided if, in general, I think Obama holds the better hand? I suppose it is great sympathy for Hillary going back to 1992--wishing she had been running the show instead of her feckless husband. Her heart remains profoundly prgressive even if she has made 1000 compromises along the way to get to this point. And now after all of that to have it all pulled away from her by this brash young guy out of nowhere--an African-American no less, thereby equalling, or even trumping, her 'first' (woman) quality. Well, it just aint fair, and I guess my loyalty to her stems primarily from that feeling. Also, that she may be made of tougher human stuff and will be less likely to compromise core Democratic priorities, as her husband clearly did and Obama might. But again---who knows? If Obama has a chance at being a 'transformative' candidate--much more so than Hillary, who am I to say 'no' to that inspiring tableau? Well, maybe 40 plus years of mostly grim political experience, maninly, of course, as an observer. The American people rarely fail to validate my worst fears, lapping up the GOP poison now for 40 years like so many Pavlov's dogs and blighting the millenial dreams of my generation. And now comes another guy evoking milleanial dreams. Yeah, right! Except at this time, if we dont go milleanial in a serious way, the world is likely to be destroyed within 50 years or so by global warming. In short, its now or never. So Go OBAMA,...I guess.

OK, to my readers, I recommend Obama but may still change my mind, myself, which may becme the first time in history that an endorser turns on his own candidate. Forunately, this election is not waiting with baited breath for my decision. So as John Edwards said in dropping out, I'll get out of the way and let history take its course. As Hillary said, this is a good choice to have--maybe the best choice we've ever had--but its still a choice that has to be made. In the end, I'll probably vote Barack. but tune in Tuesday for confirmation.

2008-01-10T10:42:00.000-08:00

see below my paen in Jewish Week to the most stimualting Russian rock group that has come along in quite awhile. Well OK, I dont hear all that many Russian rock groups, but Drozdy has got it going in terms of threnchant Dylanesque lyrics, originality and biting wit. Check out the article by clicking "continued"

by Walter Ruby
Special To The Jewish Week

Call it dialectical rock — a new musical form with roots in the psyche of the Soviet past that gives voice to all the contradictions of the present-day Russian Jewish immigrant experience.
Drozdy (Blackbirds), a musical group formed six months ago by five close friends in their early 50’s — most of whom have been part of the tight-knit Russian literary, artistic and counter-cultural scene since arriving here 30 years ago — have been winning raves since they cut their self-titled CD last month (many of the songs are available on YouTube).
On Dec. 27, Drozdy gave a rousing maiden performance before a packed house of Russian intellectual types and a few American-born admirers at the Bowery Poetry Club in the East Village.

A million miles in sensibility both from the “light as air and half as profound” Abba-like pop that dominates the musical scene in Moscow these days and the schmaltzy variant of the same performed nightly in the music halls and restaurants of Brighton Beach, the music of Drozdy is dense, multi-textured and laced with irony.
After the lead singer and writer of most of the group’s lyrics, Vadim Moldovan, introduced the group in English by saying that a Drozdy concert “is not about songs, but about drama,” the group performed a set of 11 songs in Russian. (“Our entire repertoire at this point,” Moldovan acknowledged.) Behind the stage was a movie screen showing Soviet-era films with scenes of bedraggled proletarians being persecuted by brutish exploiters and of Peter the Great leading his armies into battle.
The music was replete with obscure literary allusions that evinced a deep immersion in Russian history and culture. Several songs express the musicians’ nostalgia for their youth in long-ago and far-away Soviet times. One rhapsodizes about hanging out on Lenin Street as “my little piece of happiness.” Another contrasts the heroism of the World War II generation with the humdrum present upon the assertion that it is better to “Die as a heroic tankist [tank commander] than as a sorry [computer] programist.” Yet another stirring balled, “Burning Down the Homeland,” appeared to extol a distinct Russian-American identity:
“Our ancestral home is on fire ... while over here we are stuck in a four-hour traffic jam. ... But America at least is not Sodom. And I swear that I will never set foot again in my ancestral home because I don’t want any more contact with evil. ... Even if my fate is to sail children’s boats in puddles and even if I have to eat macaroni for dinner. ... Here I am free and proud.”
After the show, audience members said that the music of Drozdy transmits a vitality and genuineness they haven’t heard in Russian music in a long time.
Inga Kotlovskaya, 43, a marketing professional who moved to the U.S. from Kiev at the age of 12, said she finds the music of Drozdy “quirky and intellectually exciting” adding, “The song lyrics are so good that they can stand alone as poetry even without the music.” Kotlovskaya said that even though Drozdy performs in Russian and its songs contain specific references that only someone who grew up in the Soviet Union would “get,” nevertheless she finds their music “less parochial than most American rock I listen to. Drozdy has a different take on reality; one that opens you up to a broader vision.”
Yulia Belomlinskaya, 48, a poet and writer who splits her time between New York and St. Petersburg, said, “Vadim [Moldovan] has accomplished something with Drozdy that is immediately understandable to our parents, our own generation and our kids. I hope this music will inspire young people to cherish their Russian identity and investigate the culture we left behind. Russian Jewish immigrants in America have no roots. We are walking trees.”
Moldovan, 50, is a professor of social work at York College who lives with his wife Vassa, a classical musician, and their two daughters in a two-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights crammed with Moldovan’s distinctive sculptures and bric-a-brac from the family’s travels. He noted proudly that Drozdy’s songs have received 2,500 hits in the two weeks they have been up on YouTube.
“The word ‘wildfire’ comes to mind,” he said with an ironic smile, adding that he doesn’t actually expect Drozdy to become an overnight commercial success and that he and the other members are keeping their day jobs, at least for now. Yet why did the members of Drozdy, who have known each other for more than 20 years, wait until they were 50 to form a rock band?
Moldovan replied, “Look, this isn’t a middle-aged cry for attention. All of us were raised on Soviet music and symbolism, but then we came to New York between the ages of 17 and 20 and it took quite a while to put all of that together and to acquire sufficient wisdom and understanding to make this artistic statement, which wrestles with the contradictions of Soviet reality, post-Soviet reality and America.”
Moldovan said that while there are no specifically Jewish references in Drozdy songs, the group’s sensibility is profoundly Jewish. “Look at Bob Dylan,” Molodovan said. “His Jewish background screams at you, but he writes cowboy ballads. In the same way, we go deeply into Russian music. I believe that the strongest Jewish quality is being able to synthesize, to take a piece of another culture and transform it. That is what Jewish artists have always done, whether in Russia, America, and many other countries.”
Moldovan clearly has a practical side. He managed to convince his cousin, Russian-American billionaire oligarch Len Blavatnik to cover the cost of the production of the group’s first CD. “We consider ourselves the Blavatnik house band,” Moldovan said, without the usually evident tongue in cheek. “Len doesn’t quite get our music, as his own taste is toward gypsy and Romanian music, but we are grateful that he put up the money and let us produce the music we wanted.”
Asked about specific songs, Moldovan said emphatically that “Burning Down the Homeland” is not meant as a condemnation of modern-day Russia, and that another song about the Soviet era with the refrain “Good night children...smoke more marijuana” is not an endorsement of drug use, but rather, in an ironic twist on Karl Marx’s condemnation of religion as ‘the opiate of the masses,’ a description of the narcotic effect of revolutionary ardor on the masses at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution.
“The main thing about our music is that we never preach or moralize,” Moldovan said. “Rather our message is ironic and subversive. This is post-modernist, post-moralist, deconstructionist music. We take pieces of the old Soviet world and of our modern life in New York and rearrange them. We draw together cultural pieces that would never be connectable in any other way.”
Naum Khromov, a Drozdy guitarist who works as a computer programmer to make a living, said the group’s music “is a surrealistic mix of our good and bad dreams. We have come to a certain point in our lives when we all have wives, kids, mortgages, so we try to jump out of that reality into the kind of therapeutic effect one gets from creative expression. It’s a wonderful form of intellectual and emotional release.”
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Hillary's comeback

2008-01-09T11:18:00.000-08:00

Well, we have just witnessed an incredible, stunning revival for Hillary Clinton in the face of ten polls and just about every commentator around who had already written her off as dead. I am personally happy about the result, even though my last posting on the forum was an awed response to Barracks’ powerful speech after he won Iowa. In the days before New Hampshire, though, I found myself moving back toward Hillary for several reasons:

1. I didn’t feel the race should be over if Obama won in two small and unrepresentative states. The race should, and now will certainly, continue at least through Super Tuesday February 5 which will give us a chance to thoroughly vet Hillary and Barrack and make an informed decision as to who is the best change agent and has the best chance to defeat the GOP’s candidate. As much as I remain impressed by Obama, he needs to put more meat on the bones of his “change” message. What are his priorities and is he willing to go toe to toe with the insurance, oil and pharmaceutical companies and with the Republican right to get health care and a sane energy policy that really fights global warming/ All this stuff about uniting the whole body politic and no red states and blue states is lovely, but only goes so far. And Hillary needs to prove to me that she is not too much of a centrist and a militarist, but will instead resist the impulse to go to war with Iran, will find a way to withdraw from Iraq and will follow policies that isolate Islamic fundamentalism, not fan its flames as Bush-Cheney have done.

2. I disliked the media’s nasty treatment of Hillary during the lead up to New Hampshire, as well as the ‘ganging up’ on her manifested by Edwards and Obama during the New Hampshire debate. Edwards, in particular, behaved in a slimy way with his servile kissing up to Obama and deriding Hillary as the status quo. Bullshit. She was right on target to get angry and make clear that she has been fighting for progressive change in this country with 1969—has dedicated her whole life to it. Any chance that I would back Edwards went by the board at that moment. I also didn’t like Obama’s sardonic “You’re likable enough, Hillary.” And then the media going crazy when she teared up the following day—the sheer meanness of the NY Post and jerks like Dick Morris. Yes, I am sure all of that won her great sympathy, including my own.

3. Both Hillary and Barrack will need to draw distinctions with each other, but the one who goes too negative will lost my vote for sure. They need to argue over the next month about who would be a better Democratic candidate in a way that doesn’t pull the party apart; does not, for example, pit women against blacks—for that way will lead to certain destruction and likely throw the election to the Republicans. These are both fine candidates and decent human beings and good leaders, so please, Hillary and Barrack, give it your best shot, but do things in such a way that the winner of the primaries over the next month will then be able to move forward and take us to victory. And leave open the option of a Hillary-Barrack or Barrack-Hillary presidential/vice presidential ticket; since that would likely be our ticket for victory.

I’ll write on the Republicans and the Jewish angle in all of this in my next posting…

Obama

2008-01-03T22:03:00.001-08:00

Wow. I must admit I had not been aboard the Obama bandwagon, that I was torn between him, Hillary and Edwards and unable to decide which to vote for if there is still a contest in NJ February 5, but still more sympathetic to Hillary--until I heard Obama's Iowa victory speech last night. Now I 'get' Obama; that he is the most inspirational politician to come along since Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the one who may finally slay the rightist demon which has dominated our body politic since that fateful year 1968--40 years ago. Hillary's speech was fine and earnest--she really cares about change and social justice and has devoted her life to it, but there is simply no comparison between her homely, prosaic, incrementalist language and Obama's ability to soar rhetorically; to give voice to the long stymied, almost forgotten hopes for a humane America based on cooperation not competition; a country that will finally provide its people with decent health care, a sane energy policy that seriously tries to deal with global warming and that treats the rest of the world with respect. Amazing...I honestly think the race on the Democratic side is all but over and Hillary and Edwards will drop out before February 5--that Barrack will treat them with the honor they deserve and give them places at the table and that we will get down to the business of finally bringing to fruition the politics of hope. What an amazing thing to be contemplating a black president to heal America's 400 year legacy of racism. God protect Barrack and keep him safe and let us strive to recreate the energy and hope that seemed dead for so long. What a night...

Back with a vengeance as the Grinch of Penn Station

2007-12-27T05:44:00.001-08:00

Sorry for long disappearance, folks. I'll give you a report on my various sordid activities during the layoff in my next posting. Meanwhile, let me share a bit of Christmas cheer--namely, my recent public battle against Chrsitmas music in Penn Station, whoich may surprise a few of you out there who have me pegged as an anti-Semitic lefty who coddles the Palestinianb enemy and never fights for Jewish issues. It turns out that on some issues--Christmas music in Penn Station, for example, I'm the one on the barricades while the ADL is taking a pass. Anyway see below the full text of my story. A shorter version has just run in the Jewish Week http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a1533/News/New_York.html
but I wanted to regale with the full version the faithful readers of this blog by a faithless blogger who disappears for months.

By Walter Ruby
Now that the interminable Christmas season is finally over, let me share a cautionary tale about how I became the Grinch of Penn Station, intent on stealing Christmas from the children of New York and New Jersey.
It all began on the evening of December 12 after I arrived at Penn Station with my partner Tatyana from a reception in Manhattan to catch a train to our home in New Jersey and ended up going ballistic over the piped-in Christmas music.
Already for several weeks, I had been cringing every time I entered the station, passing from New Jersey Transit to subway and vice versa, in anticipation of the inescapable flood of Christmas songs constantly pouring out of the station’s industrial-sized PA system in all of their (at least for me) near-nauseating saccharine sweetness; all-AmericanYuletide chestnuts like the God-awful Chestnut(s) Roasting On An Open Fire, I’ll Be Home for Christmas, Hark The Herald, and Silver Bells.
Why do these songs bother me so much? I figured out in therapy a few years back that hearing them triggers unsettling memories of my childhood and adolescence in the 1950’s and 60’s, when I was a lonely Jewish kid growing up in all-gentile suburbs of Pittsburgh and Chicago and groping with some king-sized identity issues. My guilty little secret is that in those days I actually loved Silver Bells; a song that evoked images of an idealized WASPY social order I could never quite be part of, and of an idealized WASPY girl I adored in high school named Sandy who rejected my romantic advances because, it seemed to me, she was too much of an obedient daughter to upset her Episcopalian parents by doing something as outré as dating a Jew. So, for me, Silver Bells comes with a lot of baggage.
Nevertheless, as I have reminded myself more than once during more recent holiday seasons; ‘Being assaulted with Yuletide shlock in public spaces is an unchangeable part of December in America. Why get myself worked up about something I manifestly cannot control?’
Or so I felt until December 12, when Tatyana and I rushed into the station avid to catch New Jersey Transit’s 9:25 to Millburn, only to find out that we had missed the train by about a minute. That meant that unless we wanted to go back outside into the freezing rain, we had little choice but to sit in a Christmas-wreath bedecked waiting room and endure Chestnuts Roasting and Hark the Herald for almost an hour until the next train came along. And with the effect of several drinks from the reception still coursing through my bloodstream, that suddenly seemed to me more punishment than I should be expected to bear.
So I walked a few feet to an information desk with a stout middle aged woman behind it and asked who I could talk to about getting the Christmas carols turned off. She looked startled and asked in an incredulous voice why I would possibly want to deprive the travelling public of the joyous sounds of the holiday season. I replied that I was Jewish and since there didn’t seem to be any Chanukah songs in evidence, I could not see why travelers like me should have to endure a constant diet of songs celebrating someone else’s heritage.
The attendant gave me as sour a look as I can remember receiving in some time and told me I should walk across the floor and speak to a representative of Amtrak, the agency that owns the building. There I was told by another clerk that the person who makes the decision about what music to play at Penn Station is the stationmaster, Michael Gallagher. He naturally wasn’t in at 10 PM, but I was given to believe I could reach him the following day by calling Amtrak’s public relations office.
I did as requested the next morning, and soon found myself in extended phone conversation with Cliff Cole, a very personable Amtrak spokesperson who was quick to tell me that despite the mainstream sound of his name, he is Jewish himself and could sympathize with where I was coming from. After specifying that Amtrak is subsidized but not owed by the U.S. government and is not following any particular government policy in relation to Christmas, Cole sought artfully to distance Amtrak from the controversy by saying, “Whether or not to play the (Christmas) music is up to the station manager, Mr. Gallagher, and is not an Amtrak company decision. Each station manager decides what music to play, based on passenger response.” Yet when I requested Gallagher’s phone number, Cole refused to provide it, saying the station manager is covered by an Amtrak policy forbidding its employees to speak to the media.
“Aha” I said, “So Gallagher is, after all, a representative of Amtrak, rather than an independent actor? “Well, yes, Cole acknowledged after some prodding, “Mr. Gallagher is an employee of Amtrak, and ultimately responds to Amtrak.” So why then does Amtrak sanction such a heavy diet of Christmas music in the most Jewish city in America, with no Chanukah music or displays whatsoever at Penn Station to counterbalance the barrage of Christmas carols, or the wreaths decorating the waiting room and the large Christmas tree alongside the main ticket window? Cole responded, “The Christian population is our largest client base and we entertain for that group. Many passengers tell us they find the Christmas music enjoyable and want us to continue it…Why aren’t the Jewish holidays represented? I don’t know. Maybe in the future we could mix it up a little bit.”
Cole called back later to say he had checked into the situation and the official Amtrak line was that the company “considers the music to be secular and seasonal, rather than religious in nature.” What about Hark the Herald, Angels Sing? Cole allowed that some might consider that song to have religious content, but then blandly repeated that overall the music was clearly seasonal in nature. He added, “Amtrak is satisfied that the music is not offensive. If we had been getting complaints from the public, that might be a consideration, but this is the first such complaint I have ever received.”
Could that really be possible? As Cole himself had informed me, over half a million people pass through Penn Station every day. Could it really be that amidst that mind-boggling mass of humanity, which surely included many thousands of Jews, not one person except me had ever complained about the Christmas music? That seemed to me unlikely; at least until I called the Jewish community’s top defense agencies, the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee, to get their reaction to Amtrak’s defense of its policy. It turned out that the two agencies were decidedly lukewarm to my complaint. I left several messages with the ADL’s national director Abraham Foxman, America’s supreme arbiter of all things anti-Semitic, but the usually accommodating Foxman never called me back. The same week I was pestering him, Foxman released a statement upbraiding presidential candidates like Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee for injecting too much religiosity into the campaign, contending that, “There is also a point at which an emphasis on religion in a political campaign becomes inappropriate, and even unsettling in a religiously diverse society such as ours,,” It struck me as passably strange that the same Foxman had nothing whatsoever to say about whether the overt emphasis on Christianity at Penn Station might not be unsettling to members of the religiously diverse public that frequents the facility.
The AJC’s premiere spokesman on church-state issues, legislative director Richard Foltin, at least returned my call, but he too seemed unperturbed about the situation at Penn Station. “Yes, this is a pluralistic society, but one that is largely Christian,” Foltin said. “The courts have recognized that a secular recognition of the holiday season is appropriate and will not be totally absent of (content) showing the religious roots of (American) culture.” But has not the AJC been active in recent years making legal challenges to the display of creches and menorahs in front of public buildings across America? Sure, Foltin said equably, but the agency sees such displays as an overt government endorsement of religion, whereas it does not consider the canned music, wreaths and Christmas tree at Penn Station to be “overtly religious symbols.”
Foltin then threw me a sop, remarking, “I can’t see AJC going to court to stop the Christmas music at Penn Station, but to the extent that Amtrak recognizes pluralistic nature of society, it would be appropriate to recognize Chanukkah as well.”
Foltin’s last comment left me with the modest hope that if a few people who read this article take the time to call Cliff Cole to complain, the unreachable Mr. Gallagher might next year condescend to play I Have a Little Dreidel once in a while amidst all the Hark the Heralds, or perhaps display a menorah among the Christmas wreaths. Would I take that as progress? Definitely, though it wouldn’t go to the heart of my existential angst, which is that I will continue to feel personally violated by the barrage of Christmas music and imagery deluging me from all sides at Penn Station, at shopping malls and my local bank.
But as a professional at a Jewish organization said to me; “Walter, it is high time you figured out that you are living in America, not Mea She’arim. I mean, get a life. Do you know how many Orthodox Jews pass through Penn Station every day and don’t get all bent out of shape by the PA system playing Silver Bells? They just tune it out. Why can’t you”?
Indeed, why can’t I? Well, I seem to have some unresolved issues that better adjusted and more observant Jews don’t. So in lieu of moving to Mea She’arim, I plan to keep pushing Amtrak to make sure we get a dreidel or two at Penn Station next December.

here again is URL for the Russian Anti-Semitism story

2007-10-04T18:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=14596

Jewish-Russian tensions in the Russian-speaking community

2007-10-04T17:14:00.000-07:00

Click here to read my just-published piece in the Jewish Week on growing tensions between Jews and non-Jews in the New York Russian-speaking community. After you read it, click on 'continued' to read some more of my thoughts.I woke up in the middle of the night last night in a cold sweat concerned that my just published piece will contribute to escalating tensions between Jews and Russians in the community. Dont get me wrong; I think that the anti-Semitism (as well as the anti-Russian feeling from the Jewish side)described here is a real problem and the community needs to talk about it openly and look for solutions before it worsens. But, as always in life, there are many shades of gray. Most Jews and Russians live side by side peacefully and many are friends and lovers and business partners, etc., etc, and is it right for me as a journalist to stress the negative and possibly contribute to a strain in those relationships? Nor do I want to contribute to Jewish paranoia and fear of the 'Other', an impulse I have spent much of my career fighting, especially as it relates to Israelis and Palestinians.

So I read the piece over several times and decided it was basically fair and on-target except I wish I had kept one quote Alec Brook-Krasny made at the community meeting, which ended up getting cut from the final version. (Unfortunately, I am always under pressure to shorten my Jewish Week pieces and have to cut a lot of good material). Alec said that Jews and Russians "have a lot in common, including having being born in the Soviet Union and having all been afraid to express our real opinions…Here though there is free speech and we need to dialogue with each other and learn the fundamentals of conflict resolution. We need to emphasize our common interests and to resolve differences through political means, because if we don’t use politics, there will be war.”

Of course, he is right. There is still a lot more that holds the community together than what drives it apart and those things shouldn't be forgotten. But extensive dialogue needs to happen as the Russian-speaking community sorts out its identity. While it is sad and confusing for many to see the community's once-obvious Jewish character being worn away by a variety of factors, especially the rapid influx of non-Jews, who now may make up 40 percent or more of the community, not to mention the influx of Moscow-based TV, film, newspapers etc, the hard fact of the matter is that the change is irreversible. So the question is 'How does the community leadership manage the transition from Jewish community to Russian-speaking community in a sensible way that leaves people of all backgrounds, Kews, Russians, Ukrainians, Azeris, Armenians, Uzbeks, Tatars et al) feeling safe and open to each other. Can the old hatreds and fears on both sides be put aside and a new, bright and happy Jewish-Russian fusion be created? And how to do that at a time when Moscow, which seeks to influence the community is in the hands of an authoritarian and arrogant KGBnik flush with oil billions, who despises democracy, winks at murder of political opponents and encourages the worst elements of Russian civilization--great Russian chauvinism and silnaya ruka? These are important questions, and its good that they are now out on the table and no longer swept under the rug. It wont be easy or comfortable to talk about these things and there is potential for people becoming angry and insulted. As Brook-Krasny says, lets hope the people leading these discussions know a thing or two about conflict resolution and 'win-win' negotions. Nu, does anybody out there have opinions on all of this?"

Uh-oh!

2007-09-26T21:43:00.000-07:00

Please read following letter to editor in latest edition of Jewish Week by clicking 'continued'. Look's like I might have to consider a major lifestyle shift after all.What Are Jewish Roots?
Walter Ruby presented us with a very interesting search for his roots (“A Few Things Are Illuminated,” Sept. 7). Yet he stopped his search with the famed Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Spektor. Where would Rabbi Spektor’s search have led to if he were searching for his roots?

Part of Rabbi Spektor’s Jewish tradition is the belief in Hashgacha Pratis, which loosely translated means that God takes an active role in the day-to-day functioning of the world. Yet, despite that, each one of us has free choice to see His involvement or not. We don’t believe in coincidence. We can choose to hear the message He is sending or go our merry way. Sometimes the message is difficult to hear, but at other times it is quite clear to anyone interested. I submit, Mr. Ruby, you missed it!

You said you don’t buy the theory suggested by the locals that perhaps you were being sent a message from above. Yet I ask you to consider what are the odds of such a story occurring: that a great-grandson of the illustrious Rabbi Spektor would visit his ancestor’s grave on the Sabbath, that he would be mugged, that he would chase after the gun-wielding mugger and the mugger would not take out the gun, that he would recover the camera but lose the photos. Coincidence? Highly unlikely.

You suggested that Rabbi Spektor was “displeased” and then said it couldn’t be because what you read of the rabbi suggested that he was a “kindly man with a relatively tolerant approach.” But as I hear the story, it really does sound like a message from a kindly man with a relatively tolerant approach. You were not hurt — just shaken. And sometimes that is what we need. On Rosh HaShanah we blew the shofar. One of the reasons given for blowing the shofar is: Uru Yishaynim M’shnaschem — Awake you sleeping ones from you slumber. Mr. Ruby, awaken, you ancestor is calling you to return to your real roots.

If you think that I am off the mark or are still unsure, I respectfully suggest that you get a second opinion from any of the graduates of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (named after your great-grandfather) of Yeshiva University — as they too consider Rabbi Spektor their Jewish root.

Richard Lopchinsky
Riverdale, The Bronx

Illegal Immigrants--Then and Now

2007-09-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

Every time I turn on the radio or television these days and listen to another demagogic politician or talk show host ranting about the supposed perils that illegal immigrants represent to America, I am reminded that my late mother, Helga, was herself an illegal immigrant when the refugee boat upon which she was travelling arrived in New York Harbor from Lisbon, Portugal in the spring of 1941.

Born in Berlin in 1924 to an upper-class Jewish family, Helga fled on foot across the border into Belgium with her mother Elly Ringel in October 1938, just weeks before the officially organized pogrom of Kristalnacht. My mother and grandmother subsequently lived for over a year as refugees in Nice on the French Riviera with false Polish passports they purchased on the thriving black market while seeking visas to the United States. Yet like untold thousands of other Jewish refugees from Nazism-- most of whom ended up dying in the Nazi death camps—Elly and Helga Ringel were rejected by officials at U.S. consulates in southern France bent on carrying out the overtly racist emigration laws of the era that sharply limited emigration by non-Anglo-Saxon or Nordic types.

Then in June, 1940, the German Army swept into France, and Jewish refugees in that country became a hunted species. With the U.S. and Palestine closed, desperate refugees lined up at the consulates of various Latin American countries where corrupt officials were ready to sell them visas for exorbitant sums. My grandmother spent $20,000, nearly all of the money she had left in the world, to purchase two visas to Ecuador for herself and my mother. Thanks to those precious Ecuadorian markings in their fake Polish passports, the two were allowed to board a sealed train which took them over the Pyrenees into Spain and on to Portugal.

Once in Portugal, my grandmother renewed efforts to secure visas to the U.S., but was again met with an emphatic rejection by officials at the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon. With rumors swirling that Adolf Hitler might send his army to occupy Spain and Portugal at any moment, my grandmother decided to take a refugee ship to New York and try to win the right to stay in the U.S.

When my grandmother and mother landed in New York on April 23, 1941, my mother, then 16, was taken to Ellis Island, while Elly Ringel was allowed into the city for two weeks. With the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, she found a benefactor, Criminal Court Judge William Ringel, who was willing to pass as a relative and serve as a guarantor for herself and my mother. Two weeks later, they sailed to Havana, Cuba, where, by prior arrangement, they were issued immigration visas by the U.S. Consul, allowing them to return to New York. My mother became a U.S. citizen on June 2, 1947, a week before marrying my father, Stanley Ruby. She went on to live a full and meaningful life in which she raised three children, worked in an advertising agency, and was active in the League of Women Voters.

It is claimed that the situation of refugees from Hitlerism was quite different than that of mainly economic refugees who are crossing America’s southern border today. That is no doubt true, yet when I hear right wing pundits sneer about ‘illegals’ in a tone implying they are less worthy of humane treatment than the rest of us, I cannot help recalling that my mother was also an illegal repeatedly denied entrance into a country she later came to love and where she worked hard to improve the quality of life for all.

When I read about Hispanic immigrants who pay huge sums to unscrupulous coyotes to guide them on the dangerous passage through the Arizona desert, I am reminded of my mother’s vivid story of crossing the German-Belgian border at night guided by smugglers who subsequently threatened to rape my grandmother unless she paid them more money than had initially been agreed upon. When I read of U.S. officials dictating that the federal government will no longer cover the cost of chemotherapy treatments for cancer-stricken illegal immigrants because Medicaid is only supposed to cover “emergencies”, I am reminded of those cold-hearted bureaucrats in 1940’s Washington for whom strict compliance with the immigration laws mattered more than saving the lives of thousands of innocents.

Is there anyone out there with the temerity to claim that my grandmother and mother were criminals because they came to America as illegal immigrants rather than waiting patiently in Europe and risking one-way tickets to the gas chambers? If not, they should also cease demonizing other desperate people fleeing poverty and violence whose principle crime is seeking to give themselves and their children a better chance in life.

My Roots Trip in Jewish Week

2007-09-06T04:43:00.000-07:00

Shalom readers and advanced wishes of Shanah Tovah.
Please share my nachas at the publication of "A Few Things Are Illuminated--A Wild and Crazy Roots Trip To the Old Country" in the Jewish Weeek. I am also providing links to an accompanying sidebar piece and an article I wrote about a brave group of Russian-speakers who come together to share their grief about loved ones lost on 9-11.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=14475
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=14476
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=14481

The outragous hit on Debbie Almontaser and the Arabic school in Brooklyn

2007-08-21T15:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=14422The above link is to Larry Cohler-Esses' superb article--much better than the one in the NY Times--concerning how Daniel Pipes, the New York Post, New York Sun and other extremists out to stigmitize every Muslim in America as a potential terrorist managed to get Debbie Almontaser, a Yemeni-American who worked hard to effect trust and reconciliation between New Yorkers of all faiths, dropped as the principal of a new Arabic language and culture public school school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy. It is a sad story in which a Post reporter used trick questioning about a tee-shirt reading "Intifada-NY", which had nothing whatsoever to do with the school or Almontaser's own work, to paint a blatantly false picture that she somehow endorsed violence against non-Muslims here. Everyone who knows Almontaser, who invited hundreds of Jews and Christians to her own home in the wake of 9/11 attack, and who joined social action groups, such as We Are All Brooklyn, an inter-ethnic initiative supported by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) to combat hate crimes in the dense, mixed neighborhoods of Brooklyn, understood that the Post's characterization of Almontaser was a sleazy, disgusting McCarthyistic fraud. Yet neither Teachers Union chief Randi Weingarten nor Mayor Bloomberg, both of whom previously supported the school, had the guts to stand behind her, and, as a result, Almontaser was forced out. She was replaced as principal by an Orthodox Jewish woman, Danielle Sulzberg, who through no fault of her own, is unlikely to have much credibility with the New York Arab-American community, especially given bitterness among Arabs and Muslims that prominent right-wing Jews like Pipes aided and abetted a local body called Stop the Madrassah (though the school was to be completely secular), and groups like JCRC and the Anti-Defamation League which had worked with Almontaser in community projects over the years, did not stand up uncategorically for her when the chips were down.

What a shame. As Rabbi Michael Paley of UJA-Federation rightly put it; “The idea that unless they pass an acid test — that Muslims are terrorists until proven innocent — will mean that none will pass. We are ultimately blocking them from becoming American,” he warned. The result, he said, would be an Arab immigrant community more isolated and less assimilated, “like the Arabs in France.” The message to the Arab-American community as a result of this debacle was, “You’re a fool to think they’ll accept you,” he said.

That in fact is certainly the message of the fear and hate-mongering Pipes, who told Cohler-Esses that a school catering to the Arab community should get "special scrutiny" above any other community, and in a piece published in both the New York Post and Jerusalem Post, argued that “learning Arabic in itself promotes an Islamic outlook...“Arabic language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.”

The successful Pipes-led onslaught on Debbie Almontaser and is not only morally
repellent, but incredibly short-sighted. There are tens of thousands of Arab-Americans as well as Muslims from South Asia and elsewhere living in New York with the majority concentrated in Brooklyn in close proximity with large Jewish populations, including the Russian-Jewish community. Instead of building ties to this community through coalitions like "We are All Brooklyn" that encourage communication and reconciliation, Pipes and company are intent on infuriating and humiliating them; giving the message to young people in those communities that there is no place for them in American society and they might as well affiliate with Islamic extremism. From his perch in Philadephia, Pipes seems intent on inciting a religious war in Brooklyn; something he and his family will not be indirectly impacted by.

One has only to read Larry Cohler's piece to understands that a monstrous injustice has been done here that may set back for years quiet efforts at dialogue and understanding. The question is; 'Why was the outrageous hit on Debbie Almontaser allowed to succeed? Why didnt more people of conscience and good will, in the organized Jewish community, the Bloomberg Administration, the New York educational establishment and beyond stand up to the bigots and fear-mongerers? As the English-Irish philosopher Edmund Burke said a couple of centuries ago, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." This was a classic case of exactly that phenomenon.

he message the

back from the FSU

2007-08-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

I am back from my family-history jaunt through the FSU (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Lithuania) in one piece, excited capitivated and in one piece, despite getting bizarelly mugged in Kaunus, Lithuania, while on a guided tour with Tanya of some of the old buildings associated with my great-great-great grandfather, Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Spektor, the Gaon of Kovno (1817-1896). Sadly, my attacker managed to snatch my camera with my photos of the whole trip and while the guy was quickly caught and delivered to the police by some local youths who heard my cry for help and corraled the guy, in the process the memory chip in my camera was lost, and with it, all oif my photos of the trip. I was lucky though, because after the police frisked the attacker, it turned out he was carrying a loaded pistol. Such a thing had never before happened in Lithuania to a western visitor on a roots trip, and there was semi-serious speculation that the attacker may have been some kind of dybbuk summoned by Rabbi Spektor who might have been upset I intended to visit his grave and snap photos there--but that he showed mercy on me by sparing my life. The story of the attack on me ran on Page 5 of the main Lithianian daily paper, Lietuvos Rytas, and I was interviewed also on the main interview program on Lithuanian Radio. Honestly, I've had a hard time writing about my trip since returning because didnt want the mugging incident to overwhelm everything else, but its hard not to start with it. Here are other impressions and results. Our first heritage stop was Rostov-na-Donu, where one side of my father's family, the Tulbowitz's lived back in the 1870's and 1880's. We didnt' find what we had hoped to find; records of the home and or tavern owned by Shalom-Aharon and Sophie Tulbowitz, or of their daughter Rose and her husband Abram Bloch, who emigrated from the city for America in 1890 together with Sophie, (the rest of the family left several years later), partly because the best census of Rostov residents, including Jews, was done in 1895-96 and my family had already left for the Goldine Medina, but we did find Jewish community documents from 1878 and 1879 announcing the birth and corcumcision of their son Gabriel and death of three year old Isai, neither of whom we had, until now, on our family tree. Even more exciting, the documents identified them as "meshanin" (townspeople) from Rechica, a small town in south-eastern Belaurs. So now we know where the Tulbowitzes came from before Rostov, though we dont know yet when they left Rechicha (an archivist in Minsk will shortly check Rechica archives for clues).

Rostov itself, which had been rundown and shoddy the last time I was there in 1999, was now flush with money with the once empty left bank of the Don filled with restaurants, discos, and resorts. They are doing a good job thankfully, of preserving the integrity of the old city's 19th Century architectural core even as sleek new buildings rise in adjoining districts. Indeed, Rostov looked every bit as prosperous as Kiev where we had just been and no comparison with other parts of Ukraine, that are still terribly rundown and depressing. I knew from reports that Moscow had become incredibly rich, but I hadnt expected to see such a transformation in Rostov. We did then spend a day in Moscow, which was ludicrously expensive and choked with traffic, but we were taken to one of the best restaurants in the city by two old friends who have done very well (she is the co-owner of a winery using Bordeaux grapes in Anapa near Russia's Black Sea coast) and treated to a bottle of their best white, so left town on the train to Minsk feeling no pain...We only had a day in Belarus, but it was something of a surprise in that people we spoke to--including members of the Jewish community seemed genuinely appreciative of the social policies followed by their dictator Lukashenka, who of course has a very very bad image in the West. In short, they say, he has avoided the worst aspects of the move to free-market economics that beset Russia and Ukraine---the closing of factories and collective farms and mass unemployment and the plunging of 80 percent of the population into poverty, drunkedness and despair, by cushioning the blow, keeping alive a form of collective agriculture, keeping prices reasonable, etc, etc. Of course, he managed to do that thanks to dirt cheap energy supplies from his longtime ally Putin, but once Lukashenka made clear he did not want the much-anticipated merger with Russia unless he himself would become the supreme leader instead of merely a governor, Russia has begun charging Belarus much higher energy prices, so who knows how much longer Luka can keep it up. But at this point the population looks pretty content, well-fed and grateful to have avoided the shock therapy their neighbors endured.

Tanya and I were driven by a guide from the Jewish community to Ross', Izabelin and Volkovisk, small towns near the Polish border which were frespectively the birthplace and the first two rabbincal postings of the illustrious Rabbi Spektor, who then moved to Kovno in 1864. On the way, we saw storks in the field, lots of goats, chicken and sheep and felt to be floating through Chagall-land. We were warmly recieved by thye mayors of all three places, who had no prevjious idea that their towns were associated with Rabbi Spektor, who during hios heyday was the most influential rabbi in the Russian Empire. There are no Jews left there--all those communities were slaughtered by the Nazis and the Jewish cemeteries almost completely overgrown to the point where only a few headstones can be seen...Melancholy and haunting.

We spent our last four days in a lovely hotel in Vilnous with a magical panorama of that exquisite city, once the Jerusalem of the Litvak Jews. The beauty of the city makes the story of the annihilation of its Jews from 1941-44, which was recounted to us in detail by our superb guide Regina Kopeleivch, all the more emotionally devastating. We did have the opportunity to meet and talk to a wonderful 85-year-old survivor who we had seen in posters, suddenly come to life, and also to witness a performance of Yiddish songs performed for a group of students from around the world (including German Christians) who come to Vilna every summer to study Yiddish.

In Kaunus, besides getting mugged, we visited the ruined home and ohel of Rabbi Spektor and his second son, Tzvi Hirsch Rabinovich (Unfortunately, all traces of his first son--my great-great grandfather, Chaim Rabinovich, have vanished). I did however have one more 'Eureka' geneological moment in Lithuania. Just after we arrived in Vilnius, Regina Kopelevich introduced to another western visitor, Eli Wohlgemuth of Montreal, who said he wanted to meet me because his great-great grandfather, Rabbi Yishai Wohlgemuth of Memel (then the eaternmost city in Germany, now the Lithuanian city of Kleipeda) was a close friend of my great-great-great grandfather, Rabbi Spektor. That was amazing enough, but I was also blown away by his last name, Wohlgemuth, because my mother's mother Elli Ringel, was born Elli Wohlgemuth in East Prussia in 1900). Elli was a wonderfful lady,who escaped Hotler with my then teenage mother and came to America, but she had a snobbish disapproving attitude toward Russian Jews, who she considered uncouth and uncivilized, even though, or maybe because, East Prussia was right on the border with Russia.

In any case it seems almost certain that my Wolgemuths, who lived in Konigsburg, the capital of East Prussia until 1920, when they moved to Berlin to find Elli and her sister Hilda, suitable well-to-do Jewish husbands, were almost certainly related to Eli Wohlgemuth's family, which was based in Memel just a short way up the Baltic Coast. So in one stroke, Eli Wohlgemuth provided me with links to both my mother's family and my father's, which had always seemed so far apart, German-Jewish and Russian-Jewish, oil and water, in my mind. And the kicker was this, according to Eli, the East Prussia Wohlgemuth clan had all emigrated there from Belarus in the early 19th Century--so those who despised Ostjuden had themselves been Ostjuden a couple of generations before!!! Who would have think it??? I mean, come down off superiority shtick, German Jews, yekkes, and lighten up, already...

Nu, thats it for now...For further accounts of my roots trip, there will soon be an article in the Jewish Week and eventually a book still forming in my mind along the lines of "Encounters with a Tzaddik; Secular, liberal, decadent Walter Ruby has a hell of a dialectic across space and time with his ancestor, the illustrious Kovno Gaon and gets mugged by a dybuk in the Process"...coming in the not so distant future to a Barnes and Nobles and artsy-fartsy cinema near you...

off to the FSU in search of my family roots

2007-07-24T11:21:00.000-07:00

Leaving in 15 minutes for JFK Airport with Tanya, then Aerosvit to Kiev, a visit to Tanya's mother, and then to Rostov-na-Donu, to research the side of my father's family that left there for N.Y. in 1891 and 1895, then to Moscow and then a day driving around the wilds of western Belarus to visit birthplace of my great-great-great grandfather Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Spektor, the illustrious Gaon fo Kovno. Then we head for Lithuania, Vilnius and Kaunus, to do research on the great rabbi and his family, including my great-grandfather on the other side of my father's family, Iosif Rabinovich, Spektor's grandson, who emigrated to NY in 1875 or thereabouts. In Kaunus we expect to visit his house, grave and other sites. Maybe we will find the store owned by Iosif's father, Reb Chaim, just as in Rostov, we hope to locate the tavern once owned by the family there, the Tubovitz's. Actually, it is a long shot we will find either, but doljin probitze...

Why am I spending several thousand dollars and blowing valuable vacation time which might be more pleasurably spent on the beaches of Crimea for this family search? Well, its about experiencing a powerful connection with a kind of immortality, a deep insight into who I am, and where and what I came from. So, its ultimately 'all about me', as my whole life has been, though I am writing the family history which I will pass down to my son Gene and hopefully, later generations. Already, in this research I have unearthed names and identities of great-great grandparents on both sides, who would otherwise have been completely lost to history.

Oh, and one more thing; the next time any of my Jewish landsmen (compatriots), whether American or Russian Jews, accuses me of being a liberal, lefty, pinko, self-hating degenerate universalist, who always supports the Palestinians over my own people, I'll just say, "Nu, hevreh, I am the great-great-great grandson of the estimable Kovno Gaon, Isaac Elchanan Spektor, the greatest rabbi of late 19th Century Russian Empire. Nye plocha, eh? It appears that I am more kosher even than you. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. As for me, I'll go and smoke some choice anasha in my pipe and then gain many new insights into the Kovno Gaon and all of his world.

OK, must run. I'll send ya'all some reports as we hurtle through the FSU, insearch of the meaning of life.

Whimsically, Walter

Arab American Festival In Prospect Park

2007-07-11T07:03:00.000-07:00

I’m back after a considerable hiatus. I plan to make several postings in the coming days and then don’t expect much for two weeks as I will be on a two week ‘roots’ jaunt from Rostov-on-Don, through Belarus and Lithuania in search of evidence of my ancestors who left those places in the 1870’s and 1890’s for the Goldine Medina, and look how wildly unsuccessful I have proven after all those years. Nu shto?!? But more on that later…

Sunday, I attended the Third Annual New York Arab-American Park Festival in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, which fascinated and surprised me on several levels. Please read directly below the story I wrote on the event—it will be in the Jewish Week on Friday, but much cut and I wanted you, my faithful readers to read the full account. Then click 'continued' and read my analysis….

By Walter Ruby

It was a succulent pastiche of kebabs, humus and babaganoush from Lebanon and couscous dishes from Morocco; hora-like debke dances from the Palestinian territories and a swirling dervish-like folk dance from southern Egypt; thick Arab coffee and apple-scented tobacco being smoked in hookahs, and an approximately equal number of women in hijabs (head scarves) and with uncovered heads, including some in alluring blouses and form-fitting jeans.

Yet for all the obvious contrasts, what clearly united the approximately 500 Arab-American New Yorkers of all ages who gathered on blankets and on folding chairs in front of a temporary stage in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park for the Third Annual Arab Heritage Park Festival on a broiling Sunday, July 8, was a palpable manifestation of pride and joy that, after several years of being in the closet, they now feel safe to proclaim their Arab identities in the open air in strong and confident voices.

According to Linda Sarsour, 27, a Palestinian-American who is acting director of the Arab-American Association of New York, one of the agencies that sponsored Arab-American Heritage Week, including the Park Festival, the Annual Arab American and North African Cultural Street Festival in Greenwich Village the previous day and the upcoming Bay Ridge Arab American Bazaar, set for July 17; “After 9-11, Arab-Americans went into isolation for several years. It was home to school or work, and back home again.”

Yet according to Sarsour; “Arab-American Heritage Week, which began three years ago and was officially proclaimed by Mayor Bloomberg, has played an important role for Arab-Americans in New York to reclaiming their identity. When our people saw community leaders promoting the event, they came out and got caught up in the celebration.” Sarsour said the point of the week of festivities is to “not only to have fun and interact with each other, but to display our culture to non-Arabs.” Pointing out that the Arab community includes Christians and secular people as well as Muslims, Sarsour said, “We want to take away the image that Arabs are deeply religious people who can’t have a good time. Hopefully people will accept our culture and who we are if they get to know us better.”

Sarab Al-Jikali, a 31-year-old Syrian-American who works as an advertising executive, said the Park Festival “is a wonderful occasion full of fun, good food and great music that gives a chance to our very diverse community to come together and feel what unites us.” Al-Jikali, who wore a tee-shirt with the slogan ‘Arab X-ing’ said that message conveyed by both his shirt and by the Festival is, “Hey, there are Arabs present here. We exist as a people and a culture, and are tired of being demonized by the mainstream media as terrorists or fanatics. Nowadays, the only acceptable form of racism in America today is against us.”

Young women wearing hijabs at the event mixed freely, and seemingly unjudgmentally, with others in more western garb. Hanan Tabbara, an 18-year-old political science major at Hunter College, who emigrated to New York from Lebanon in 2001, said non-Muslims often misunderstand why she chooses to don the hijab. “I do not wear it for religious reasons, since I am not religious at all, but rather as an identity thing,” Tabbara explained. “For me it’s like the ‘Afro’ was for black women in the 1970’s; an assertion of pride in my heritage.” Tabbara said that the Park Festival was the first outdoor community event she had ever attended and left her feeling “wonderful, empowered. It feels so safe and comfortable to be surrounded by your own, celebrating what you are about.”

Nearby, Mina, a 27-year-old Yemeni-American fashion designer from Bay Ridge clad in a low-cut blouse and a nose ring, sat smoking a hookah with a similarly dressed friend originally from Saudi Arabia. “The hijab thing is no big deal,” Mina asserted. “Sometimes I wear one and at other times I wear shorts and a tank top. My parents used to ask me to cover up, but now accept that I have the freedom to live my own life. At the same time, I never forget that in Arab society, you represent your family and not yourself.” Mina, who declined to give her family name; said of the festival, “By being out here today, we are saying to all of New York, ‘We are here among you, and we are not afraid. I am so proud to be Arab and American. After 9-11, I was afraid to say that, but not anymore.”

Spectators of the sonorous musical presentations performed on drums, the lute-like oud and santoor (dulcimer) on a temporary stage near the corner of Prospect Park West and 15th Street, appeared to have come to the event primarily from Bay Ridge and other parts of Brooklyn, although considerable numbers came from Arab communities in Queens and Westchester. The celebrants originated from countries across the Arab world, with the largest groups seemingly from Yemen, the West Bank and Lebanon.

While music, dance and food were clearly the main emphasis, groups like the Arab-American Family Support Center set up tables and handed out pamphlets about ESL and computer training classes and a man dressed in a bear costume promoted health insurance on behalf of WellCare of New York. Several pro-Palestinian political groups also distributed literature, including Al-Awda, a staunchly anti-Zionist group mainly composed of university-aged youngsters, and Brooklyn for Peace, a more middle-aged group based in nearby Park Slope, several of whose volunteers at the event identified themselves to a reporter as Jewish. One, Naomi Allen, commented, “I feel that I have a responsibility as a Jew to speak out against what Israel is doing in the Occupied Territories, which is stimulating an upsurge of anti-Semitism effecting Jews around the world. We are out here today to educate Brooklynites about the complicity of our own government in Israeli policy and to build bridges between the Arab community, the Jewish community and others.”

Sarsour of the Arab-American Association, said her group is building ties with more mainstream Jewish organizations; locally with the Bay Ridge Jewish Center, and on a city-wide basis taking part in coalition-building activities with the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. Sarsour said that she will not allow political groups to distribute literature at the Bay Ridge Arab-American Bazaar next Sunday because, “I want all of our neighbors in Bay Ridge to feel welcome and comfortable at the Bazaar, including our Jewish neighbors.”

Several people at the Festival said they have had positive encounters with Jews, including Sheren Atfal, the 25-year –old director of the Yallah Youth of Arts Teen Dabke Dance Troupe, who emigrated to the U.S. from the Israeli town of Lod at the age of 3. Atfal remarked, “We have to let Americans know that we are not terrorists and that we don’t want to kill Jews. They are our neighbors and we are engaged in outreach to them. I am one of many Arabs in Brooklyn who take part in the Dialogue Project (a Brooklyn-based organization that has held monthly dialogues between Jews and Arabs in Brooklyn and Manhattan since 2000). Also, Yalla Youth did a dance together with Israelis in Red Hook.”

Atfal acknowledged that, “There is some radicalism among our youth, especially among kids who listen to their grandparents complain about the injustice done to Palestinians and Arabs. I’ve heard some kids say, ‘Screw all Israelis’ and I respond, “No, we can’t say that. Israelis have sisters and brothers too. They are human beings, just like us.”

Zafer Tawil, a musician, who came to Brooklyn from East Jerusalem seven years ago. “Since coming to New York, I have played my darbuka (Arabic drum) with musicians from around the world, including Richard Teitelbaum, who is well known for his electronic music. Richard and I made beautiful music together, and politics seemed very far away. That was an exciting moment for me.”
So what surprised me? First, the degree to which so many people said they had gone into the closet after 9-11, and how excited and fulfilled they felt to come out and manifest their pride thanks to the festival. Well, obviously not only to the Festival—the shock had worn off and life goes on, but it was fascinating to witness a whole community shouting, ‘Say It Loud, I’m Arab and I’m Proud’, but not in a belligerent way, but rather in a self-appreciative and celebratory mode. Its obviously a healthy sign.As Marcia Kannry,
the founder and director of the Dialogue Project, a Brooklyn-based group of Jews and Arabs in ongoing conversation said of Arab-American Heritage Week, “I am so happy and grateful that the Arab-American community is claiming its heritage. That is important for me as a Jewish person, because I believe that celebrate their culture, they will better be able to understand the pride I feel in my own.”

The second thing was the hijab thing. It had never occurred to me—though it should have—that someone like Hanan Tabbara, the Lebanese-born but American raised and accented 18-year-old political science major at Hunter College, would choose on her own free will to wear a hijab where ever she goes, not because she had become an observant Muslim—she pointed out that she is completely non-religious, but as an expression of Arab/Muslim pride? As you see above, she compared it with black women wearing Afros in the 70’s. Do I approve of her choice to walk around with a head scarf all the time, even on broiling days like we are going through at the moment? No I don’t, but then my feelings about it are hardly the point. What I can say, though, as a secular liberal Jew, is that her motivation becomes somehow more understandable and less threatening to me when I hear that she is doing it out of ethnic pride, rather than being one of millions turning back to some medieval religious oputlook.

And what about Mina, the fashion plate in the low cut blouse, whose family came to New York from Yemen when she was a child? Mina said that one day she can slip on a hijab and the next shorts and a tank top. Mina just got back from studying four years in Dubai, which she said was “like an Arab L.A.—all Gucci and glitz, and I loved it.” Mina said she puts on the hijab sometimes to please her family and other times because she wants to effect a certain look. So the thing is that Mina and Hanan are totally different types; one serious and scholarly, the other sometimes a sexy vamp into expensive clothes and design, but each puts on hijab for her own reasons—which contrast with those of the other and both of which are very different from what those of us in the non-Muslim world assume is the reason that women put on head coverings.

In other words, we outsiders understand next to nothing about what is going on within the Arab and/or Islamic psyche, even in our own backyard here in New York. Some people have written on this forum, ‘The Arabs/Muslims think this or that’—usually something nefarious or evil, when in fact these same people have never spoken to a live Arab/Muslim. If you are going to understand them, you have to communicate with them. I’ve done a bit of it over the years, but I’m out of practice and my visit to the Park Festival tells me I need to do a lot more talking to Arab-Americans in the weeks and months ahead.

Ha Kol be Seder in Moscow

2007-06-18T09:43:00.000-07:00

Click here for my latest piece in Jewish Week on the mood of Jewish leaders in Moscow as Puutin cuts back on democracy and denounces the U.S. Stop the presses--they insist everything is OK.

Gaza: The Horrifying New Situation and some (well, just a little) heshbon hanefesh

2007-06-15T16:07:00.000-07:00

The military collapse of Fatah in the Gaza Strip at the hands of Hamas, whose spokesmen quickly announced its intentions to turn the 25-mile-long densely settled enclave into an entity ruled by strict Islamic law, is a watershed event which calls for a reassessment of the situation by everyone on the Jewish side of the barricades, including people on the dovish left like myself. For decades, after all, I have been calling for Jewish-Palestinian dialogue and reconciliation, and have been urging Israelis to pull back to the 1967 lines and to pull out of settlements in order to achieve it. Yet now Israel faces an unalloyed enemy across the Gaza border which refuses to acknowledge Israel's existence or to offer Israel more than a long truce in an ongoing war dedicated to the final destruction of the Jewish state. Hamas sees itself as the vanguard of an Islamic polity—a new Caliphate stretching from Indonesia to Morocco—rather than as a specifically Palestinian entity. For Hamas, the question of the creation of a Palestinian state seems oddly irrelevant.

One can, of course, debate the reasons for this calamitous turn of events and I would argue that Israel's brutal, spectacularly short-sighted occupation policies in both Gaza and the West Bank over four decades contributed mightily to this awful denoument. Israel's unwillingness to trade land for peace in a timely manner; its insistence on constantly expanding settlements and grabbing more and more Palestinian land; its imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians on an ongoing basis and shoot to kill policies against Palestinians; taught two generations of Palestinians that they were fighting an implacable foe with whom there was no point in compromising as Israelis would never allow the Palestinians a dignified existence. Even the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, with its 20-years-too-late destruction of settlements, backfired since Israel subsequently insisted on deepening Gaza's isolation to the point where its residents slipped ever deeper into poverty and despair and became ever more devoted of Hamas and Islam as their only salvation.

Having reasserted all of the above, I have to acknowledge that the solutions I have advocated all of my adult life no longer appear viable. The supporters of Hamas appear dead set against a two state solution and not interested in communication and reconciliation with Jews; only in renewing the long struggle to destroy the Jewish state, even if it takes 100 years or more.

Over the years, I have had many wonderful personal encounters with Israeli Arabs and Palestinians; who received me in their homes as a brother, who, as much as they denounced Israeli policies, treated me as an equal and never demonized me as a Jew. This was never a religious war for them any more than it was for me. It was a conflict of two nationalisms for which there was at least the hope of ultimate solution. Now it is Hamas and the Islamists versus the Israeli right in a zero sum game of total destruction, and everyone with more moderate positions on both sides are the losers.

What happens now? Gaza is lost for the foreseeable future, but perhaps there is still a chance to strengthen Fatah in the West Bank; but that would only work if Israel is prepared to make major concessions, including uprooting a large number of settlements and taking down roadblocks and checkpoints which make Palestinian all but unbearable. But Israel shows no willingness to do—especially now. So the likelihood is that Hamas will become the dominant force in the West Bank as well, although it will be unable to govern openly as long as the IDF is there. What a miserable choice for the Palestinians of the West Bank—perpetual occupation or being taken over by Islamic militants intent on imposing Sha'ria.

And now for the heshbon hanefesh (soul searching) I promised at the top. I can no longer say confidently to my fellow Jews that if Israel were now to final adopt a conciliatory course and agree to pull out of the West Bank and Palestinian sections of Jerusalem, that would cause most Palestinians to agree to accept Israel. It appears that today most Palestinians are so angry and embittered that they would prefer endless war and occupation rather than accept Israel's existence. Therefore I can no longer in good conscience counsel Israel to take risks for peace. The Palestinians are simply not interested at the moment.

That wasn't much of a heshbon hanefesh, was it? Well, I don't think I was wrong in believing in peace and reconciliation. People like me were right, but unfortunately the hard liners on both sides won the day because the majorities in the middle weren't willing to fifght as hard as the extremists. It shouldn't have come to this. But it has, and at least for the moment, I am bereft of ideas as to how to overcome the damage. There has been a paradigm shift on the Palestinian side and in the new circumstances of ascendant Islamism, I have to admit I haven't a clue.

One can only hope that the experience of living under Hamas will prove to be so bitter as to disabuse Gazans that Islamic rule in the answer. Perhaps in a year or two, more likely in 5-10 years, a majority may sober up to the point that they will see anew that the only way out of the morass is reaching a two state solution with Israel. Just as Israelis eventually awoke from the ideological fantasy of a Greater Israel, hopefully the majority of Palestinians will come to understand that the maximalism of Hamas leads them nowhere except deeper into shit.

In the meantime—well, I'd rather not think about the meantime for the moment. I'm leaving for a nice weekend with Tanya in Connecticut and the whole matzav, the whole situation, is so profoundly screwed up as to defy imagination.

Russian-Jewish genealogy piece in Jewish Week

2007-06-08T16:38:00.000-07:00

please click here for my piece in Jewish Week on surge of interest in geneology in Russian community. More on this in my next posting zavtra.

Jewish Week piece on pensions

2007-06-01T04:23:00.000-07:00

Having trouble again with link--will have to call my brother Dan for an urgent refresher course. Technical stuff as you already know, is not my strong point..Anyway to read the elusive piece, go to www.thejewsihweek.com and click on the story entitled "Pressure Rising on Russians to Pay Pensions". Then scroll down to my previous posting for the story behind the story of how Yakov Gutman made this happen more or less single-handedly

Jewish Week piece on pensions

2007-06-01T04:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=14133

pensions from Moscow

2007-06-01T03:57:00.000-07:00

See after the jump a link to my just published story in the Jewish Week about a meeting in Moscow from June 4-6 between Russian authroities and the US Social Security Administration (SSA) over US advocacy that the Russians should pay pensions to emigres here who worked their whole lives in the Soviet Union. The remarkable story of how this all came about-one very determined Yakov Gutman from Mozyr, Belarus meeting New York politicians, first and foremost, Jerry Nadler, but also State Comptroller Billy Thompson, State Assemblyman Bill Colton and City Councilman Lewis Fidler etc. Nadler pushed SSA and the State Department, who pushed the Russians who agreed to a meeting on the issue for the first time ever. All of this despite the fact that the entire Russian leadership class dislikes and distrusts Gutman, who had his issues with the Jewish leadership in Belarus before coming here (charges and countercharges) and is known here as a cagy free-lance operative. Still, as Alec Brook-Krasny acknowledges in the Jewish Week piece, Gutman pushed this issue single-handedly to the point where the whole world is now taking notice; a very impressive piece of politicing that a political animal like B-K cannot help but admire. As Gutman himself put it in a quote that was left on the cutting room floor at the Jewish Week, "I am gratified this thing has gotten to the popint where it is no longer just one crazy Gutman pushing it.."

Bush and Putin--the worst people in the world

2007-05-27T19:31:00.000-07:00

The news these days stinks all over the world, but one is constantly shocked by the absolute nadir, willfull blindness, stupidity and thuggishness, absolute retrograde thinking represented by two of the most powerful men in the world, George Bush and Vladimir Putin.The other day we had news that the representatives of the Bush Administration were adamantly rejecting calls by Germany and other European states to set mandatory emissions targets as well as language calling for G8 nations to raise overall energy efficiencies by 20 percent by 2020. The Washington Post obtained documents showing the Bush team rejecting a call for a statement by the G8 calling for limiting the worldwide temperature rise this century to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit and cutting global greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. "The US still has serious, fundamental concerns about this draft statement," The Post quotes a document dated May 14 as saying, citing an unnamed Administration source as saying, "The treatment of climate change runs counter to our overall position and crosses multiple 'red lines' in terms of what we simply cannot agree to... We have tried to 'tread lightly' but there is only so far we can go given our fundamental opposition to the German position."

What the hell is the matter with these people? Bush is Nero fiddling away while the world burns, and he is ensuring that he will be cursed by future generations--starting with the generation of his children and grandchildren who will have to inhabit the degraded world he is helping to ensure. When did it become "conservative" to deny incontrovertible scientific evidence and insist that we have the right to go on destroying the environment for the sake of the American economy--as though the economy wont be negatively effected by a world of catastrophically altered climate and coastline cities being swallowed up by rising seas? The people that run this sicko Administration arent conservative (which is supposed to be about conserving basic values and ensuring a decent future for future generations), These people are just plain nuts.

As for Putin, I just watched a CNN video of gay activists, including European parliamentarians, getting beaten up by Russian fascist thugs in front of the Moscow munciplality while the police stand idly by, until the OMON troops come in later--and arrest the gay activists. Russia is again becoming a brutal land where the rule of law is a complete joke--its the KGB iron fist all over again. Meanwhile, Luzhkov, once a liberal and now desperately licking Putin's ass, calls gays "satanic"--if he wants to see satanic, he ought to take a look at the crew cut and skinhead nasties who were allowed by his police to beat brave up gay activists--both Russian and foreign--with impunity. If he wants to see satanic, he ought to take a look at his president who has taken the bright promise of democratic Russia and thrust the country back to Brezhnev times.

cant make the lousy link!

2007-05-17T20:52:00.000-07:00

Sorry, but my technical incompetence is kicking in big time tonight. So if you want to read an in-depth piece by yours truly on writers Alex Halberstadt and David Bezmozgis mixing it up with 20 and 30 something members of RJeneration on the themes of Russianness, Jewishness and authenticity, go to the following URL: http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=14081. Enjoy.

May 9 in celebration of NY Holocaust Survivors Associaiton at National Restaurant

2007-05-17T19:40:00.001-07:00

the second picture is of Tatyana Rapaport receiving award from Alec Brook-Krasny. Pardon me wile I shlep a little nachas.

further response to Locke--the nature of 'social justice'

2007-05-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

First, I want to apologize to Locke for inferring that he might approve of the racist sentiments of the late and very much unlamented Strom Thurmond and George Wallace (in case you are curious, I dont miss Jerry Falwell a bit either). As he notes in his response to my last posting, I should have understood from the word 'con' that Locke disapproves of segregation as much as I do, but somehow his contention that those shmucks were a manifestation of any form of liberalism, including the classic 19th Century version, seems to me unwarranted.

In any case, getting to the post-'dalche' stuff, Locke and I have a fundamental difference of emphasis. When I use the term 'social justice', I think of all fighters for human rights and the rights of workers and the poor and blacks and women and Jews in this country; the liberators of the slaves in America and the serfs in Russia; the people who fought and sometimes to curb the power of the monopolies and big industrialists and get us a minumum wage and an eight hour workday--people like the Jewish Labor leader, Sidney Hillman of the Lower East Side, who fought for the rights of garment workers in the early 1900's and in whose name the the New York Immigration Coalition is holding a ceremony on May 22 to which I was just invited by my friend Vladimir Epshteyn (more of the present generation of Russian Jews need to learn about the likes of Hillman and other Russian-born Jews who fought for social justice 100 years ago, inproviing conditions in the hellish sweatshops where so many Jews were forced to work, and where many Russians had to go again in the 1970's and 1990's. When I think of social jusitce, I also think of the moral center of Judaism and the imperative at the heart of our heritage to tikkun olam, to making the world a more just and decent place.

Yet when Locke hears the term 'socal justice', he has a totally negative reaction and sees only sinister 'politically correct' nastiness such as "the ridiculous ADA law dedicated to bankrupting businesses that dont include braille at ATM's" (I've never noticed braille at ATMs myself, but hey, why shouldnt banks as institutions that serve the public, including handicapped people--be required to make themselves accesible to the blind anyway--why is that so terrible?) If Locke were blind and needed to go to the bank, he might have a different take on this. Then he goes on to attack rape shield laws (what about unscrupulous attorneys that savage rape victims a second time by making their former sex lives the issue instead of their having been raped?) Yes, occasional injustices happen like the Duke case, but many many more women in the pre rape shield era got ravaged twice; once by their rapist and once by the justice system.

Locke whines about Steve Solarz getting gerrymandered out of his district to create a Hispanic one, but I hear nothing from him about the GOP stealing the 2000 election, of the ongoing efforts of the Bushies to prevent as many minorities as possible from voting, or Tom DeLay's gerrymandering of about 10 Texas seats to soldify GOP control of the House after the 2004 election. What else? Locke complains about child abuse protection laws as though they are somehow worse than the horrors of child abuse they were created to prevent. Such laws may not be perfect, but better laws that try to even the playing field, to protect the poorest and weakest and most vulnerable in society against their exploiters than one with weak government that leaves us all to the tender mercies of the richest half of one percent.

Locke echoes generations of Republicans that government is the enemy; that Congress is worse than Big Oil and Big Pharm. I dont think so. Congress, at least in its present incarnation, is trying to pass laws to raise the minimum wage, to stop the ripoffs in the student loan business; to take steps to stop global warming before all the businesses in Brighton Beach, including Locke's, get swept away in the next warming-induced hurricane; to protect our civil liberties from the depredations of the Bush Administration--the most anti-democratic in our history. Yet Locke tells us that Congress is worse than Big Business, to which the main, and sometimes the only, priority is the profit motive. Question to Locke: How does Big Pharm and the Health Insurnace industry, which keeps raising my co-payments and the price of drugs so they can miltiply their profits, a better friend to me and tens of millions of other middle class and working class Americans than is Congress, which is at least taking feeble steps to try to correct the power imbalance after six years of the corporate elite running completely amok.

Question: Why is Locke more afraid of supposed 'politically correct' injustice than the wholesale screwing of all but the very rich in this country that has been going on since 2001? Why is he more afraid of social justice than Bush's refusal to control emissions, a 'Nero fiddling while Rome burns' madness that will likely make the lives of his children and mine a living hell? Its the corporate elite that has all of the power in America, not politically correct liberals, and it is the corporate elite, together with reactionary Republicans, who have sought to return us to a time before there was social justice; to a time when money decided everything. Like I said last time, we ain't going to let Bush and company turn the clock back 100 years. No pasaran. Tak nye budit.

May 9 in Brighton and response to Locke

2007-05-11T09:23:00.000-07:00

Oi, rebyate, sorry again on long absence. I know bloggers are supposed to file almost every day, sort of casual riffs, even if they dont have coherent essays formed, but unfortunately, even though I approve of said philosphy in principle, it goes against my 30 plus years training as a journalist, and its hard for an old dog to learn new tricks. Hopefully, I'll get better at it, because I realize my extended absences slow down the forum. Anyway, with that said, a few thoughts on a May 9 celebration at the National Restaurant by the New York Association of Holocaust Survivors, and then a belated response to Locke..

What is their secret? As on past occasions, I was at a celebration of the New York Association of Holocaust Survivors, and there were several hundred people in their 70's and 80's, most happily married couples with both partners still very much alive and seemingly in love, eating, drinking and dancing to a medley of Israeli/ Jewish hits (the Russian singers, clearly not Jewish, always say "shalom aleihem", completely missing the 'ch' thing) and sentimental Russian songs, both modern and from the World War II era. They radiate health and vitality; these sturdy men and women who survived death camps and ghettoes where they lived behind barbed wire surrounded by sadistic German or Romanian guards, or who served in the Soviet Army during those years, many of them, the whole four years right up to and including the liberation of Berlin. Having survived all of those horrors, and then 40 years or more of Soviet power after the war--with all of its mean anti-Semitic attitudes and unwillingness to acknowledge Hitler's attempted genocide against the Jews, they now find themselves in their golden years, living in a strange new land, the longstanding enemy of the Soviet Union, but one which allows them to celebrate their Jewishness and survival of Jews.

So what is their secret? How do they balance it all? I didnt get a full answer when I asked many of them, except that if you could fight your way through 1941-45 physically and mentally in one piece, the rest was bound to be a relative piece of cake. And of course, they feel great nachas about their lives in America today and especially about the lives of their children and grandchildren, filled with excitement and opportunity.

The unofficial leader of the organization is the indominable Fira Stukelman, herself a ghetto survivor, who in her 70's has become one of the Russian community's treasures; a consummate community leader and political operative. Fira, who positively vibrates with energy and purpose, played a key role in electing Alec Brook-Krasny last year; putting on the line her own popularity in the Russian pensioner community--a majority of which backed B-K's rival, Ari Kagan. She faced much criticism during the campaign, including a break with her former close friend and political ally, Kagan, but, convinced of the righteousnes of the cause, she stuck with it and delivered enough elderly voters to B-K to help elect him in a razor-thin vote. Fira and I dont agree on every issue (though certainly on most), but she is someone who cares deeply for her community, is deeply concerned about problems of housing, crime and poverty, especially among the elderly--and is having a positive impact on allieviating those problems through her involvement in the political process. Take a bow, Fira Stukelman.

I would also like to thank State Assemblyperson Alec Brook-Krasny for presenting a certificate of appreciation to my partner, Tatyana Rapaport, NYANA's Director of Acculturation, for her support of the New York Association of Holocaust Survivors. Alec spoke warmly of Tanya, saying how deeply she deserved the honor for her years of quiet but effective work on behalf of NYANA in the Russian community. Tanya was characteristically modest in her response, but I was brimming over with pride, so a big thank you to Alec and Fira for that classy gesture.

Alec took the occasion during his remarks to condemn Estonia for recently removing a monument to the Soviet army liberators of Tallinn from a central square in that city, an action that led to rioting by ethnic Russians in Tallinn, harrassment of Estonian diplomats in Moscow and the hacking of Estonian government websites, allegedly by Russian operatives. Alec's point during his speech was that the Soviet soldiers who died reconquering Estonia from the Nazis in 1944, and whose remains have now been unearthed from beneath the momument and reburied elsewhere in the city, were not responsible for Stalin's atrocities against the Estonian people, either in 1940-1941 or in the aftermath of the 1944 liberation, and should not have been dishonored in that way.

I agree that the digging up of the monument was a counter-productive gesture by the Estonian government. Yet, while Alec did mention something about Stalin having resembled Hitler, nowhere in his remarks do I recall an explicit acknowledgement that the Soviet dictator exiled hundreds of thousands of Estonians to Siberia and brought a similar number of Russians into Estonia in order to russify the little country. place. Nor do I recall any mention of an ongoing Soviet effort right up to the end of the 1980's to quash the identity of the Baltic peoples or to acknowledge the Soviet Union's guilt for crushing the right to self-determination of the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian people.

Alec's remarks won only tepid applause from his audience of Holocaust survivors and veterans, even though they knew very well and must have been refecting that a considerable number of Estonians, and many Latvians and Lithuanians, collaborated with the Nazis and even formed brigades to kill Jews. Perhaps, despite all of that, the survivors and vets may have been uncomfortable with an excoriation of Estonia at a time when the Putin regime uses bullyboy tactics to harrass Estonians in Moscow, relentless steps up its rhetoric against the U.S. and drives more nails into the coffin of Russian democracy. Whatever one can say in condemnation of the Estonian action, the same, and much, much more, can and should be said about the way Putin's Russia is behaving these days.

And now to Locke's recent essay on this forum. Presenting himself as a classic 19th Century liberal who adovcates freedom of speech, individual rights, unfettered free-enterprise, Locke writes, "So far so good. This is liberalism as seen by the original Locke, by
Presidents Jefferson and Washington and Lincoln and the first Roosevelt
from the Pro position, and by Governor Wallace and Senator Thurmond from
the Con. This is my liberalism. Affirmative action and school busing are
quite thoroughly anti-liberal: once you trample the rights of one concrete
individual in search of the nebulous concept of social justice, you
redefine liberalism into something it is not. You might say I have a
conservative view of liberalism: I want to conserve classical liberalism
that informed the idea of the land of opportunity. Social justice, the
keystone of "new liberalism", reminds me of a tailor who made all the
underwear with room for one testicle after proving, mathematically, that
that's how many the average American has."

Well, excuse me, Locke, but Gov. Wallace and Sen. Thurmond trampled all over the basic human and political rights of not one person, but many millions of people, simply because of the color of their skin, just as much as Hitler, Stalin and Brezhnev trampled on the rights of the Jews. Wallce, who shouted, "Segregation Forever" was, of course, much more vicious toward blacks than Brzhnev was to Jews; Jews might have had to endure curses of "zhid" on the tramvei of Moscow, but they were not required by law to ride in the back of the bus. Jews were not prevented from sitting with Russians in restaurants, or forced to use special bathroom facilities (which I witnessed with my own eyes on a trip to Virginia as a child in 1959), or denied the right to vote, or forced to go to special Jewish elementary or high schools, (though of course, Soviet Jews were kept out of universities and institutes).

Of course, it was not just Wallace and Thurmond but a whole apparatus of official segregation by the federal government that was not brought down until the 1960's. Locke is apparently saying that his liberalism upholds the right of a white bigot owner of a restaurant or motel to keep black people out of a public facility simply because they were black. That is not even a correct reading of the 19th Century liberalism he claims to support, which as he points out, included, "freedom of thought for individuals, limitations on power (especially of government and religion), the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a market economy that supports free private enterprise, and a transparent system of government in which the rights of all citizens are protected". OK, so what about protection of the basic human rights of black Americans to use a restaurant or bathrooom, to vote, to be protected from a crazed white citzenry who could hang them from a tree at any time with the connaivance of the police? Earth to Locke, those basic rights of African-Americans were consistently denied by the United States from the date of its founding until 1965. So it feels to me that your so-called 19th Century liberalism is really an endorsement of American racism pre-1960's.

Dalche, you say that 'social justice' is counter-productive for the weaker members of society. Yes, no doubt, average Americans would be grateful to follow you back to the late 19th Century when there was no minumum wage or limit on how many hours an employer could demand; when children were sent to work in mines and factories from the age of seven or eight; when factories and workplaces were extremely dangerous for workers and government did nothing to protect them from accidents or provide them with any compensation for losing a a hand, arm or leg; when there were no laws to prevent corporations from fouling the environment or selling dangerous drugs to people; when a few oligarchs with names like Rockefeller and Carnegie built monopolies and controlled the entire economy, when the rich got much, much richer and the poor lived miserable Hobbesian lives--in short the very world the Bush Administration is trying so hard to take us back to and to which the American people said a belated 'no' to last November. Sorry, Locke, but I don't trust the oil or pharmacudical companies to put my health and welfare above their own obscene profits.
They have a very poor track record in that regard.

As for universal health care, you give us reasons it supposedly can't be done. All I can say is I lived without health insurance for two years, and as a result I didnt take care of my growing prostate in time before it closed up, causing me exquisite pain and forcing me into the hospital two months ago when, Thank God, I did have health insurance. But what about the nearly 50 million Americans, men, woman and children who dont have it? I know you love children, but what about the millions of American children, who, through no fault of their own, are denied needed trips to the peditrician because their parents can't afford to pay for it? What the hell, under your gospel of 19th Century liberalism, everyone has the right to make a good living and to have superb health care on one hand or to go hungry and avoid going to the doctor on the other. Sorry, but we need to leaven that system with some good old social justice--a lot more than we have today.

As for the Russian debacle of the 90's, you blame the failure of the Russian masses to discern they were individuals and to start acting as such; to seize the time and the resources the way Berezovsky, Gusinsky and company did. Well, it was utterly unrealistic to expect a couple of hundred million people taught to think collectively for 70 years and hundreds of years of serfdom before that, could instantly make an abrupt U-Turn and revolutionize their thinking. What was needed was a turn to social democracy not Adam Smithian capitalism; and the insistence of the idealists to give us the latter brought the oligrachs to power, discredited Yeltsin and democracy and now has given us the dictatorship of KGBnik Putin.

Anyway, many thanks for taking the time to reply, and lets get together over some stakanee in the nearest budishee where we will make a serious, if doomed, effort to change each others' respective vzglads.

thoughts on sad fate of Ehud Olmert

2007-05-01T13:54:00.000-07:00

Friends, Druzya, I had promised to respond to Locke's missive published below and will do so next time, but given that the Winograd Report has come out with a damning account of Olmert's behaviour on the Lebanon War, I thought I would write a little about Olmert today.
As I write, Olmert seems to be hanging by a thread after being excoriated for "severe failures" by the Commission. Whether he will be forced to resign immediately depends in part on the intensity of the demonstrations against him over the next 48 hours and whether Kadima continues to back him. According to the latest press reports, the party chairman, Avigdor Itzhaki, plans to call on Olmert to resign at a meeting scheduled for Thursday. Itzhaki is said to have called several Kadima members of parliament today to ask for support. It is quite possible that the party might dump Olmert in favor of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. It is noteworthy that the party's leading Russian-speaking figure, Marina Solodkin, is so far the only Kadima MK to call for him to leave.

It seems to me that Kadima ought to follow the Dump Olmert for Livni option if only for the sake of survival; Olmert is dead meat aqainst Netanyahu if elections are called soon, (as would be Labor leader and Defense Minister Amir Peretz, or likely whoever replaces Peetz in Labor Party elections at end of month) whereas if Livni, who is relatively untainted by the Lebanon debacle, can become PM without elections, perhaps she has a chance to refloat a moderate Israeli politics that can stand against the right-wing maximalism of Bibi. I certainly hope so, although, given that the peace process is stuck anyway, maybe its OK to let Bibi come in and discredit himself again, as he did the last time around. If Bibi does take over, he will have to moderate his position to deal with political reality as even Bush won't accept a totally rigid Israeli position re the West Bank. But I would certainly prefer to let Livni become Israel's second woman premiere, a youngish, relatively fresh face, who although from a Revisionist family, seems more prone to moderation vis a vis the Palestinians than the likes of Bibi.

In any case, whether Olmert goes now or lingers on for a few more weeks or months, he is kaput as PM. What happened to this very talented, very bright, politician to cause him to self-destruct so spectacularly? Even more than most politicians, he was a shrewd political insider-technician who seemed long ago to have sold out whatever principles he may have had and came to savor the so-called finer things in life; luxurious homes, gourmet pasta and fine cigars that captivated so much of Israel's nouveau riche class. As a result, when things went awry in last summer's war, it soon became clear that there was 'no there there', no substance at the heart of Olmert. Rather, he turned out to be the classic empty suit, albeit a finely tailored suit.

I interviewed Olmert back in 1989 in Jerusalem for several American Jewish newspapers during the period he was serving as deputy minister for Israeli Arab affairs--in other words, the minister responsible for improving the lot of the Arabs living inside Israel's 1967 borders, then maybe 800,000 and today more than a million. When I told him what various Arab leaders had said to me about the endemic discrimination they suffered vis a vis Israeli Jews--in terms of job discrimination, not being able to live in Jewish areas, much lower government funding for Arab schools, municipalities etc, than Jewish ones, Olmert readily acknowledged that was true and said it was a dangerous situation for Israel's longtime security and that he was committed to trying to make some improvements. I was struck by his intelligence and sensitivity on the subject, something I hadn't expected in a Likudnik. Looking back, it seems to me that he quickly figured out my politics (it doesnt take a genius to do that) and was playing to that in how he answered my questions. As far as I know, he subsequently did next to notbhing to improve the condition of Israeli Arabs during his tenure as deputy minister, and a few years later stoked right-wing anti-Arab sentiment in defeating Teddy Kollek to become mayor of Jerusalem. Once he became mayor, he constantly pushed for expansion of Jewish neighborhoods in Arab areas and allowed armed settlers to move into Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem like Silwan and bully terrified residents. Yet based on my interview with Olmert, I knew that he knew better, knew he was playing a demagogic role in order to become mayor. It was all about satisfying his ambition.

Another anecdote that I will share about Olmert is a bit more titilating and falls under the rubric of lashon hara (malicious gossip), so those with Judaic scruples about indulging in such things should read no further. An American Jewish woman whom had lived in Israel with whom I was once friendly, sought to escape a stifling marriage in the late 1980s and went for a four day spiritual getaway in Esalen, a hippieish new age paradise overlooking the magnificent Pacific in Big Sur California. One of the things people do in Eslaen is to get naked together in hot tubs--all in a deeply spiritual and non-sexual way, of course. Anyway, my friend was in such a tub blissed out and contemplating the meaning of life when she realized that the guy sitting next to her in the tub, naked with a big cigar between his teeth, and urging her to go with him to his bedroom, was none other than Ehud Olmert. A few years later, of course, when he was running for mayor, he denounced violations of Shabbat by clubs in downtown Jerusalem and totally pandered to the ultra-Orthodox, who voted for him en masse.

Again, what is manifiesat here is a shameless hypocrisy which we see in many politicians, but which, it seems to me, was so advanced in Olmert that he didnt believe in much of anything except advancing his own career and increasing his bank account with shady real estate deals. And its very sad, because he had a great deal of potential. I have detested quite a few politicians including Richard Nixon, Arik Sharon, and George W. Bush. Olmert I don't detest. Indeed, I rather like him. He had the intelligence and drive to be a great leader, but he blew it somewhere along the way. Chaval, djalka, for him, but also for the rest of us.

Opening the Locke box

2007-04-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

Chevreh, Reebyata, As part of my committment to open rubyjewsday to respectful discussion between myself and interlocutors in the Russian community and beyond, I have asked my friend Locke to respond to my posting about the late, great Boris Yeltsin. Locke has done that and more in a thoughtful article you can read after the jump. The author is a prominent member of the Russian community who prefers to post under the pseudonym Locke on this blog, so I honor his desire to remain anonymous while sharing with us some provocative ideas. Now class, please ponder his words well, because I will respond to him in several days and then there will be snap exam to see if you all have been paying attention.

I think I am a liberal. Really. I look on Wikipedia and I find the
following:

"Liberalism refers to a broad array of related doctrines, ideologies,
philosophical views, and political traditions which advocate individual
liberty.[1] Liberalism has its roots in the Western Age of Enlightenment,
but the term has taken on different meanings in different time periods.

Broadly speaking, liberalism emphasizes individual rights. It seeks a
society characterized by freedom of thought for individuals, limitations
on power (especially of government and religion), the rule of law, the
free exchange of ideas, a market economy that supports free private
enterprise, and a transparent system of government in which the rights of
all citizens are protected.[2] In modern society, liberals favor a liberal
democracy with open and fair elections, where all citizens have equal
rights by law and an equal opportunity to succeed.[3]"

So far so good. This is liberalism as seen by the original Locke, by
Presidents Jefferson and Washington and Lincoln and the first Roosevelt
from the Pro position, and by Governor Wallace and Senator Thurmond from
the Con. This is my liberalism. Affirmative action and school busing are
quite thoroughly anti-liberal: once you trample the rights of one concrete
individual in search of the nebulous concept of social justice, you
redefine liberalism into something it is not. You might say I have a
conservative view of liberalism: I want to conserve classical liberalism
that informed the idea of the land of opportunity. Social justice, the
keystone of "new liberalism", reminds me of a tailor who made all the
underwear with room for one testicle after proving, mathematically, that
that's how many the average American has.

Most traditionally "liberal" institutions have decidedly counter-liberal
effects. Labor unions limit upward mobility of their own members by
collective bargaining, and in union shops nonmembers need not apply.
Public schools inculcate political correctitude in much the same way by
much the same people who in the past burned heretics at the stake. Equal
Rights Amendment, a classic liberal idea, went down in flames because of
the dent it would have put in the huge advantage women have in such areas
as marital law, "rape shield" law, and domestic violence laws --
advantages promulgated by "new liberal" legislation. In socialized
medicine, the issue gets complicated further: the single biggest obstacle
to universal affordable quality care is -- surprize! -- individual
freedom: because it is also freedom to break your neck on a motorcycle,
acquire AIDS (or transmit it) by the myriad ways that can be done, or eat
yourself into a triple bypass. So a society that is serious about
universal health care will have to find some means to keep one
irresponsible individual from consuming the resources that would have paid
for thousands of vaccinations -- again, anathema to a classical liberal.

So here we come back to the Russian debacle. Was it a failure of
capitalism? I think not. Capitalism, in its purest sense, is private
ownership of means of production. Well, the late Soviet period was a time
of near-bankruptcy of the public ownership of means of production -- and
what kept it partly afloat was private CONTROL of means of production that
were nominally public. Privatization was a desperate attempt to forestall
the impending collapse of the entire national economy by infusing it with
individual responsibility, flexibility, accountability, motivation, drive,
courage, reward -- yes, freedom to succeed and its inseparable twin,
freedom to fail. The failure was a failure to recognize how much of the
above qualities were present in the Russian people -- and how concentrated
they were in how few individuals. It was a failure of the liberal idea
that every individual is sacred, doomed by the masses who saw themselves
as just that, masses, faceless herds shepherded by the few individuals
carrying the whip and the carrot v sil'nyx rukax. And what is the social
theory that gauges people according to what herd they belong to? Right.
Social liberalism. Don't think so? What do you think the Bakke case was
about? Has any "Womyn's" group ever lost a discrimination case? Do you
remember the way congressional districts got jerrymandered to screw Steve
Solarz out of his constituency? Remember Hymietown? All "new liberal"
creations; all milestones in the creation of a mob from former
individuals.

So here it is. Shortish, it ain't, but misunderstood it should not be.
Were I a wordsmith for a living it might scan better, but still and all,
not bad, I hope, for a second language.

An invitation to Locke

2007-04-26T04:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Locke,
In your response to my piece on Yeltsin, you ask me to try to look at the Yeltsin era through "Russian eyes" and understand that the failures "were not so muchy of Reaganomics as of the rosy-glasses liberalism." Nu, if you have the time and inclination, send me a shortish essay to my e-mail walterruby@gmail.com explicating that viewpoint a little deeper. I'll put it on rubyjewsday as a guest essay and then respond. I think it would be an instructive exchange.
Best, Walter

Boris Nikolaiovich Yeltsin

2007-04-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

As someone who had a ringside seat for the collapse of the Soviet Union-serving as correspondent for the Jerusalem Post and Maariv in Moscow from early 1990 until mid-1992--I remember Boris Yeltsin when he was not considered a drunken clown, but as a brave, resourceful and inspiring political leader who broke with the corrupt Communist elite to become the avenging angel of the long-suffering Russian people. I was in Moscow for the sublime three days in August 1991 when Yeltsin stood atop the tank and faced down the enemies of human freedom, inspiring thousands of other Muscovites at a critical moment to rise above their very justifiable fear and demand an end to a horrible system. As one middle-aged woman told me that day as the tanks drew closer and closer to the barricaded White House and a repeat of the massacre of Tienemen Square 1989 seemed likely; "I cant leave here and go home to safety right now even though I know my life may be at risk because I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I gave in again and allowed these fuckers to do to my children what they did to myself and my husband."So the big question is this; what happened to the inspiring leader of 1991 to reduce him within several years to a sick joke; a drunken bufoon seemingly intent on destroying the very vision of Russian democracy he had brought briefly, shimmeringly to life? I think I know the answer; Boris Yeltsin's heart was broken by the results of his government's disastrous free-market policies of the first year of his rule of independent Russia and after the bloodletting he ordered around the White House (Parliament) in 1994, he was a broken man who turned to drink to drown out the anguish he was feeling. Yeltsin was sold a bill of goods; namely, the free-market fantasies of the Russian democrats who he trusted and empowered. They believed that democracy and capitalism are identical and all that needed to be done was to open Russia to the free market and everything would proceed beautifully. So Yeltsin's Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar tried that in the early months of 1992, with every citizen being given a chunk of the former Soviet state to do with as they wanted--mainly to quickly sell off to the bigger fish for a few hundred rapidly diminishing rubles, and within less than a year, Gaidar and company had allowed most of the resources of the state to be accumulated in the hands of a few ruthless 'oligarchs', while the vast majority of Russians sank into abject poverty. Within a year or two, Yeltsin was hated by the very masses who had once adored him.

Then came the events of 1994, when he used violence to stand down his parliamentary opposition, the disastrous first invasion of Chechnya and the 1996 elections, which he bought with the support of the oligarchs. Yeltsin ought to have resigned before going through with any of these actions, which were all in direct violation of the humane and democratic values he championed against Gorbachev and the harder-line Communist Party hierarchy from 1987-1991. Unfortunately, Yeltsin allowed himself to be convinced that he had to stay in power to prevent the return of the self-same nomenklatura and had to use every possible means to do so. Through all of that, Yeltsin corroded the meaning of democracy to the point that the vast majority of Russians came to hate the very word and were glad to turn themselves over to the updated totalitarianism of Putin.

The problem, in my mind, was less with Yeltsin personally than with the illusions of the Russian democrats of the Gorbachev era; among them many of the bravest and purest human beings I ever had the privelege to meet. Brave and pure, but deeply deluded. Their fatal flaw was that in their just hatred of everything related to the Soviet system, they assumed that the seeming opposite of the Soviet system--i.e. pure capitalism--must be the answer. In those years, I had discussions with many of these people---some Jewish or part-Jewish and others ethnic Russians--who were leading demostrations demanding the end of Communist Party rule and the creation of genuine democracy. Few of these people at that point had ever travelled outside the Soviet bloc and their vision of America was literally Reagan's rhapsody of a shining city on a hill. I hated to be the bearer of bad news, but was frequently forced into that role, feeling compelled to acknowledge that Reagan-era America was hardly a paragon of justice and freedom; that, yes, as Soviet propaganda said, we DID have serious problems related to race, poverty and social dysfunction in America, that we DID have whole areas like the South Bronx that looked a lot like Berlin after World War II, that, in my mind, the Reaganites were reversing many of the gains built up over generations in America since the progressive era by breaking unions, eviserating needed government programs and starting a process of huge tax cuts for the rich which was greatly increasing the gap between rich and poor in our country. When I would say these things, my Russian interlocutors would seem at first bewildered and then turn away from me with the apparent conviction that I was one of those deluded, self-hating Westerners who for mystifying reasons didnt understand what a paradise I was priveleged to live in.

And sure, they were right in their main conviction; the American system, despite all its flaws, WAS much better than the Soviet one both in terms of allowing human freedom and in providing a decent standard of living. But what they didnt understand was that what made the American system, and even more so, the European social democracies, work, was precisely that they were NOT pure capitalism, but because a certain level of social protection had been built into it over the the decades, minumum wage, social security, unemployment insurance, unions, and so much more. Without all of that, without the willingness of the system to bend for its own good, we might have had a socialist revolution of our own back in the 1930's. But the Reagan era was a time of the rhetoric of unalloyed capitalism and because Reagan had called the Soviet Union an "evil empire", he was a hero to dissidents and democrats in Moscow.

So the leaders of Democratic Russia sought to create pure capitalism in Russia in 1992, and they ended up re-creating the robber baron era in America before the dawn of the progressive era, when most of the resources of the country were in the hands of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Henry Ford and a few others. They were given the chance to use Russia as a laboratory for this wildly misgotten social experiment because of the popularity of Yeltsin--the muzhik, the man of the people, who had been convinced by Gaidar and the others that it would work--and within a few months, they ended up impovershing millions and, in the process, destroying Yeltsin. He saw how quickly his popularity among the masses turned to disillusion and contempt toward him, and he was contemplated that he had sanctioned the process and was responsible for the result, something inside him snapped. He had spent his life as a Communist, was converted late in life to capitalism, came to power on the capitalist wave, and was destroyed politically and emotionally when it abruptly receded. He had staked everything on the capitalist way; when it clearly screwed Russia and the common people, he was demoralized and turned to drink.

But I honor the man who I saw standing on that tank that day; the man who summoned first in thousands and then in millions for a fleeting time the belief that despite its 1000 years of despotism, Russia was not fated to remain a shithole, that Russians were full human beings with the power to transform their own lives and the society in which they lived. If I die tomorrow, I will remember the experience of witnessing that uprising as an enormous privilege, a deeply spiritual experience, which showed me the transcendant possibilities of the human spirit. The Yeltsin Revolution came apart within a year or two on its own contradictions; but it happened and it was a shining moment like 1789, 1848, 1905, 1968 etc, which in the long run helps move the human race toward a happier future where people can live more fulfilling and purposeful lives. Boris Nikolaiovich Yeltsin, z"l, you may be a prophet without honor today, but at a critical moment, you grabbed history by the horns and thrust it boldly in a new and better direction. Few are privileged to play such a role, and whatever came later, your greatness at that moment can never be tarnished.

more thoughts on Virginia Tech

2007-04-20T10:49:00.000-07:00

The media coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre has been peurile and insipid beyond words. Either we are given mawkish coverage of the grieving process with endless sacharine valentines to the victims, or we are given an intense close up of the deeply sick mind of mass-murderer Cho Seung-Hui. Never mind that by doing so we are fulfilling Cho's fantasy that by killing as many people as possible alongside himself, he would achieve the attention he craved but couldn't get in life. Even worse, American society is sending a message to the many other disturbed young men who are obviously lurking out there that 'If you act out like Cho, you too can become famous, notorious for eternity'. The message we ought to be sending, the only real way we can ensure that the victims of this horror did not die in vain is exactly the message we are not sending; namely, getting that we are going to get serious as a society about keeping guns out of the hands of psychotics like Cho. read the following

for an understanding of how a sane society would behave. The sad truth is that we are an insane society; one that refuses to do what is necessary to protect our citizens from gun violence. Even the most feeble attempts in that direction are stopped by the gun lobby, in front of which politicians of all descriptions quake in fear.
The most fundamental obligation of a society is to accord the maximum security to its citizens; American society gives the clear message that 'gun rights' are more important than the right to be protected from crazed murderers with guns. How sick is that?

My friend Locke wrote in response to my last posting on this subject that the solution is to let more people carry guns into places they are presently banned--like on college campuses. He falls for the gun lobby conceit that a well-armed citizenry will always act responsibly, and if they must shoot, shoot straight. Does he think no one will shoot prematurely; that no 'normal person' with a gun will ever become angered, drunk or some combination of the two and lose control? I'd hate to see Brighton Beach in the early morning hours as people stagger out of the restaurants if everyone around was packing heat? It would be 'Shootout at the 'Haroshe Corral' or something like this. Presumably we are living in the 21st Century, not the era of cowboys and Indians. What Locke is apparently saying is forget about the police, everyone should carry a gun, shoot first and ask questions later. And that is going to make us safer? The purest madness...

the need for gun control

2007-04-17T14:41:00.000-07:00

It is sad beyond words that even in the wake of the horrible massacre at Virginia Tech University yesterday, only a few Democrats have summoned the political courage to call for reactiviating the struggle for gun control in this country--a sign of how totally we have fallen under the iron control of the gun lobby since the Columbinbe shootings back in 1999. Even though a majority of Americans continue to support sensible limitations on handguns, there is a strong feeling that Al Gore may have lost close states like Florida, Ohio, West Virginia and New Hampshire in 2000 (he would have been elected if he had won even one of them) because he backed gun control and thereby turned off numerous rural voters in those states. Even though gun advocates are fewer, they are far more fervrid in support of their cause.

Even assuming that is true and even assuming a similar political dynamic exists today, how pathetically timid and how irresponsible not to take up a cause that is literally about preserving American lives. It is revealing that the riots in France that went on for weeks in immigrant communities around the country in November 2005; riots which were quite violent and involved hundreds of injuries and arrests, only one person was killed. Why? Because unlike here, the French, like other Europeans, do not have easy access to firearms. Meanwhile, the murder rate in urban communities across America, including nearby places like Philadelphia and Newark continues to rise to new records. Why? Because of the self-same easy access to guns.

There are always going to be alienated and mentally ill individuals like the gunman in Blacksburg, Virginia. That is sadly true in every modern society, in Europe as well as the U.S. A few such people are always going to become angry and/or crazed enough to decide that not only do they want to end their own lives, but desire to lash out at society by taking as many possible innocent victims with them. But only here in the U.S. are such people able arm themselves to the hilt at will and then go out and carry out their sick ambition to slaughter scores of their fellow citizens before shooting themselves. Why the hell do we allow such carnage to continue?

For the President and Congress to refuse to push for gun control laws that would keep weapons out of the hands of maniacs like this one is absolutely to be complicit in the slaughter of innocent Americans. The killer in Virginia pulled the trigger--again and again---but it was our political elite that enabled him to do so. To hear George W. Bush, who ignored the pleas of police departments across the country and allowed some of the few laws preventing the sale of advanced weaponry and ammunition to expire a couple of years ago, now purporting to leading our nation's mourning for the innocent victims of Virginia Tech, is nothing short of nauseating. Bush might have saved these lives, and many others, if he had been willing to advocate the passage of sensible gun laws that would still have allowed law-abiding citizens to own rifles for hunting. He might have done that, but instead he consciously chose the path of political expediency and allowed those essential regulations to expire.

As is well known, Bush and the rest of the rest of the political and religious right-wing in this country, the people that too mnay in the Russian community embrace as political allies, label themselves as 'pro-life.' For them being 'pro-life' means endeavoring to prevent women from deciding themselves whether or not to bring to term fetuses inside their own bodies. Or it means fighting to save stem cell lines that, if instead used by science, might actually bring cures to hereditary diseases. So for these holier than thou, supposedly deeply religious moralists, upholding the sanctity of life means caring deeply for unborn fetuses and stem cell lines. Yet for Bush and company, being 'pro-life' has nothing at all to do with saving the lives of living and breathing Americans; has nothing at all to do with preventing students at Virginia Tech from being cut down in the prime of their lives by senseless gun violence. On that question, the 'pro-life' crowd supports the right of all Americans, including crazies like this one, to arm themselves to the teeth. In other words, the so-called 'pro life' crowd chooses death over life.

Shame on the Democrats, most of whom know better, for being too afraid of their own shadows to take up anew a cause that needs to be at the heart of any real 'pro-life' agenda--the cause of gun control. America's religious communities, including the Jewish community, needs to scream loud and clear for our political class to wake up, show some guts and pass some new gun control laws that can help prevent horrors like the Virginia Tech massacre from happening across America, again and again.

resolution of prostate problems+Chernobyl story

2007-04-15T14:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, Sorry again for long absence. I know that I always come up with fancy excuses for not posting on RubyJewsday but this one is legit. Last Tuesday,I had a prostate operation known as a Transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) from a superb urologist named Dr. Simon Hall at Mt. Sinai Hospital, and now after several days in bed can report success in the art of peeing after more than a month of being able to do so only with the help of a catheter. Yes, I know there are probably readers out there shouting "Too much information!" and "uujay khvatit, ya eto nye hachoo znat" but hey, I feel like sharing, this is my soapbox and I'm feeling decent for the first time since February 27, when I had the prostate bioposy which unfortunately got infected and set off this whoile painful process. Anyway, I can pee again, and with an impressive stream that I haven't seen in several decades. More to the point, I'm alive, well and ready for the next challenge. I didn't totally collapse during the month I was sick, I actually wrote an article or two.

Here is one that appeared in this issue of the Jewish Week, about the unlikely alliance of Dr. Igor Branovan, Assemblyman Alec Brook-Krasny, with an important assist from power broker Gene Borsch, convincing the New York State Legislature and Gov. Spitzer to give $540,000 to allow members of the Russian community who mayy have been exposed to radiation during the 1986 Chernobyl incident to be screened for thyroid cancer.

Here is the article

The story is at once a noble humane gesture that is above reproach and an example of the community's new political power in the wake of B-K's election to the State Assembly--the first time New York State has funded a program aimed primarily at the Russian-speaking community. As Brook-Krasny points out in my article, the program will certainly save lives of people who might otherwise die of thyroid cancer if their cancer was not found in time, and, on that basis, it is almost impossible to criticize, which also makes the Russian communal establishment's pushing this as their first legislative priority as brilliant PR, brilliant politics, as well as an important humanitarian initiative. It is also undeniable that while not one penny of the $540,000 in state money will go to the mainly-Russian doctors who offer the screening, those doctors will enjoy a significant new revenue stream from the many people coming in for the screeing, or actually from their insurance companies, Medicaid and Medicare.

So some may ask whether this is something state government should be funding. Let me share here the response I received from Jeff Gordon, head of Gov. Spitzer's Budget Office when I raised that very question:

"The initiative you are referring to is an item that is for a legitimate public purpose that was negotiated with the legislature and will be paid for with resources they identified during negotiations. In his budget proposal, Governor Spitzer proposed reducing the growth of Medicaid spending in order to finance both expanded access to health care coverage for children and investments in primary and preventive health initiatives...A program like this is consistent with those objectives."

And this from the very same Spitzer who just a couple of months was insisting upon huge cuts in health care spending. And then the Russian community goes up to Albany, bends the very tough Spitzer and comes home with half a million dollars in NEW health care funding, and that is only for the first year--they will almost certainly ask for funding of this program for several years to come. A compelling blend of humanitarianism and VERY smart politics.

Jewish Week piece on Mashkevich+ full text of reaction from Russian consulate

2007-03-29T18:34:00.000-07:00

Please see here< my Jewish Week article on Mashkevich, which unlike the story I posted yesterday contains a reaction from a spokesman from the Russian consulate in NY. I am however, posting after the break, the full statement from the spokesman, which, unlike the Jewish Week piece, includes a citation of Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, head of FEOR and Chabad-Lubavitch in Russia in Washington just a few days ago that all is well and good for Jews in Russia. Sure sounds like shtadlonis at full throttle.span class= " fullpost "> We consider such statements of Mr. Machkevitch absurd and being far from the reality. The measures which the Russian government undertakes in its fight against illegal immigration strictly correspond with the national and international law. These actions are not aimed against any particular nationality or ethnic group and are very similar to those which are undertaken by the U.S. Government in its struggle against illegal immigration.

Russia deports people of different nationalities if they violate the immigration law. Georgians or Azerbaijanians are not on top of the list. However the number of Georgians among other nationalities which are being deported from the Russian Federation is fairly high. The main explanation for that is the low standard of living in Georgia that provokes a high level of working migration from Georgia to Russia, approximately 150 thousands people a year, but only few of those immigrants observe all the necessary legal procedures. For example today only 4,5 thousands Georgians have the official working registration in Russia out of approximately 1,5 millions known Georgians immigrants.

Instead of solving its own economical problems Georgian Government prefers to search for an enemy outside the country to blame it for all the troubles Georgian people suffer these years. Following this policy Georgian officials try their best to present the deportation of illegal immigrants from Russia as the demonstration of xenophobia by the Russian Government.

On the contrary the leaders of other ethnic Diasporas which live in Russia state that the situation in Russia has considerably changed for the better. As for the Jews in Russia, during his last visit to USA on March 20-23, 2007 the Russian Chief Rabbi Mr. Berl Lasar at his meetings with the U.S. Congressmen underlined that: The Jews in new Russia possess all the rights and due respect". He also noted that the Russian Government undertook considerable efforts to provide the true equality of the Jews in the society.

A Breath of Fresh Air among FSU Jewish leaders

2007-03-28T17:16:00.000-07:00

At last a Jewish leader from the FSU,--Alexander Mashkevich of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress--with humanistic values. In an interview he did with me that will appear this week or next in the Jewish Week, Mashkevich condemned the Putin government for promoting xenophobia against minorities--today Georgians and Azeris--tomorrow maybe Jews--and says American Jewry should be aware of what is going on in Russia. He condemns Avigdor Lieberman's insistence that Israel and the West are in a "War of Civilizations" against Islam and calling for more dialogues between Jews and Muslims of the kind he sponsored in Kazakhstan under the aegis of his patron, President Nazerbayev, whom, he noted, doesn't allow explicitely anti-Semitic tracts to be sold in the streets of Astana and Alma-Ata, as they are in Moscow and Kiev. Finally, Mashkevich praised the hard work of Chabad-Lubavitch in the FSU, but called for Jewish life in which no group (read Chabad) has a "monopoly", and where all streams of Jewry are welcome, including Reform. Mashkevich, said to be worth $2 billion was warmly received at the UJA-Federation Russian Division dinner last Sunday and Mark Levin of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry agreed with his assesment of what is happening in Russia and said he is an important leader who is not to be underestimated. Please read the text of my piece after the jumpBy Walter Ruby

One of the most prominent Jews in the former Soviet Union has accused the regime of President Vladimir Putin of contributing to xenophobia against minority groups in Russia and thereby endangering Jews in that country.

Alexander Mashkevich, president of the Kazakhstan-based Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC), a regional body affiliated with the World Jewish Congress with representation from all the Jewish communities of the former Soviet Union, as well as those of such countries as Poland, Bulgaria, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and India, said in an interview; “There is a powerful wave of nationalism and xenophobia in Russia and the regime (of President Putin) is part of the problem, not part of the solution. If the Russian government is kicking Georgians and Azeris out of the country today, what might happen to other minorities tomorrow? (hundreds of Georgians were expelled from Moscow last year, apparently in retaliation for actions by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili that Russia considered unfriendly).” Mashkevich stated, “We must speak out now—not only against anti-Semitism, which we carefully monitor in all the countries of the FSU, but against nationalism and xenophobia in general, in order to prevent the situation from deteriorating further.” Mashkevich said he is “determined to share (his) concern about rising xenophobia in Russia with the American Jewish community and the U.S. government.”

Mashkevich, 53, was in New York to receive the first–ever Global Leadership Award at the UJA-Federation Russian Division Annual Gala. Feted at the March 25 event by the likes of Sen. Charles Schumer, UJA-Federation executive vice president John Ruskay, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations executive vice president Malcolm Hoenlein, and Rabbi Arthur Schneier of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, The Russian Division event, which raised $500,000 for the UJA-Federation annual campaign, also honored Gene Rachmansky, a Manhattan attorney who was one of the founders of the Russian Division’s Young Leadership group.

An academic in Kyrgyzstan in Soviet times who went into the business world in the late 1980’s and eventually became one of the three co-owners of Eurasia Group, a Kazakhstan-based company with interests in aluminum, chromium, coal, construction and banking, Mashkevich is worth an estimated $2 billion, according to the 2006 Forbes survey of the world’s billionaires. A close confidante of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazerbayev, Mashkevich also holds Israeli citizenship, and spends much of his time airborne between Israel, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and other countries where he has either business interests or involvement in Jewish life.

A tall balding man with a mustache and an affable and unpretentious manner, Mashkevich confirmed his reputation during the interview as perhaps the most liberal of the Russian-Jewish oligarchs on a variety of religious and political issues. Mashkevich, who has sponsored several high-level Muslim-Jewish dialogues in the Kazakh capital of Astana under the patronage of President Nazerbayev, a Muslim, said he “totally disagrees” with what he characterized as the position of Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman that “Israel and the West are in a ‘War of Civilizations’ with the Islamic world. I oppose that way of looking at the world because I believe it only plays into the hands of a small group of Islamic radicals. In reality those radicals are unrepresentative of the majority of Muslims, who have nothing against the Jews or the West. So we need to do much more to further dialogue between Jews and Muslims.”

Since its founding in 2003, EAJC has had an uneasy relationship with the Federation of Russian Jewry (FEOR), a Chabad-Lubavitch-affiliated body which is the most powerful Jewish umbrella organization in Russia and whose leading figure, Rabbi Berel Lazar, is recognized by the Putin government as Russia’s chief rabbi. Mashkevich said that while he “is very grateful for the magnificent work Chabad does all over the FSU, I oppose a monopoly on Judaism by Chabad or any other group. I think all trends within Judaism should have freedom to flourish in the FSU, including the Reform movement.”

While not directly criticizing FEOR and another umbrella body, the Russian Jewish Congress (RJC), for being generally supportive of the policies of the Putin government, Mashkevich suggested that they, unlike the EAJC, have been intimidated from taking assertive stands against the government of Russia when it moved in directions inimical to Jewish interests. “The EAJC can say things that FEOR cannot, because they live in Russia, whereas I am in Kazakhstan. For example, we strongly supported Israel in last summer’s Lebanon war, but FEOR and RJC were unable to do so. They always have to remember where they are living.”

Asked about a speech Putin made last month in Munich in which he denounced the United States for allegedly seeking to “establish a unipolar world” under its hegemony, Mashkevich said, “It is well known that Russia is striving these days to become world center of gravity. In my view, all major partners in the world should respect each other.” For his part, Machkevitch believes; “The role the United States and American Jewry have played in rebuilding FSU Jewry has been immense. We will never be able to repay the support we got from UJA-Federation and other American Jewish organizations going back to Soviet times. Nevertheless, today, when Jews in the FSU have more resources, we seek to build a more equal partnership with American and world Jewry than existed before.”

Mashkevich said that the EAJC operates from the principle that “Happy Jewish communities only exist in happy countries. Therefore, we stand up for the rights of all citizens, including Jews and fight all forms of xenophobia, not only anti-Semitism.” Noting that, “In Moscow and Kiev, it is possible to buy the most aggressive forms of anti-Semitic literature,” Mashkevich said, “That should not be permitted and, in fact, is not permitted in Kazakhstan, where all forms of ethnic incitement are prohibited.”

Mashkevich seemed more concerned about the rise of ultra-nationalism and xenophobia in Russia and other FSU countries than about infringements on democracy in those countries; perhaps unsurprisingly given that his own patron, Nazerbayev, is widely considered to be an authoritarian figure, who has been accused by groups like Human Rights Watch of holding flawed elections and arbitrarily jailing and sometimes torturing opposition figures. Asked about this, Mashkevich smiled broadly and said in an ironic tone that “Kazakhstan is the most democratic of the so-called ‘Oriental democracies’; a reference to the states of former Soviet Central Asia.

Mashkevich was warmly praised during the UJA-Federation dinner by Hoenlein, who called the EAJC leader “a friend and partner with whom we have worked on behalf of the Jews of many lands. (Mashkevich) turned the reversal of the Iron Curtain to the benefit of Jewish community.” Mark Levin, executive director of NCSJ (formerly the National Conference on Soviet Jewry), said of Mashkevich; “He is a visible and vocal advocate on behalf of Jewish populations throughout the FSU and a promoter of greater tolerance and understanding among different religious and ethnic groups.”

Levin added, “We certainly share Mashkevich’s concerns about the rise of nationalism and xenophobia in Russia.” Levin said his group has been assured by Russian government officials that they oppose trends toward ultra-nationalism, but added, “We want to see more concrete actions by the government; a combination of law enforcement and education. Right now the Russian government has a very serious problem.”

thoughts on the shooting of Yevgeny Marshalik, Russian-Jewish feelings of vulnerability and the task ahead

2007-03-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, sorry for my long absence. I have been dealing with the after affects of illness and have had minumum emotional and physical energy for spilling my guts here, especially after finishing my duties for Jewish Week, Daily News etc. Let me reconnect here with my latest Jewish Week story about the death of hero auxiliary cop Yevgeni Marshalik z"l, and his father's campaign to get auxiliary cops the right to wear bulletproof vests. Then read on for some musings on the pain such an incident evokes in the Russian community

My discussion with Boris Marshalik, a well known pediatrician in the Russian community with an office in Sheepshead Bay, was moving on several levels. Here is a guy who emigrated with his wife from Pyatigorsk, not far from Chechnya back in 1994, seeking a more secure place of habitation for his two sons, and then the older one, Yevgeni, an honor student in Brooklyn, goes to Stuyvesant H.S. and witnesses 9/11 up close and personal and insists on staying at Stuy for all four years of high school even though his family has in the meantime moved to the security of Woodmere, Long Island with quality public schools. The 9/11 experience impacts him deeply--drawing him toward law enforcement--and he decided to study to be a prosecutor and to become an auxiliary cop. He and a partner get word on their radios that a man has left a crime scene, having apparently shot someone and they pursue him and demand he stop, even though they are without weapons. The man shoots the two of them dead execution style.

What does it all mean? First, the Marshaliks' lives have been devastated; their wonderful 19 year old son so full of promise has been stolen from them in a city where they had reason to believe he would be safe. I heartily endorse Boris Marshalik's campaign--supported by Assemblyman Alec Brook-Krasny who will introduce a bill in the State Legislature that auxiliary cops be given bulletproof vests if they desire. Brook-Krasny noted that Eugene Marshalik is the first Russian-speaker to have died in the line of duty defending the New York community, and that evokes feelings of pride and deep sadness.

In a larger sense, the incident graphically evoked the sense of vulnerability so many Russian Jews in New York feel. They came here to escape anti-Semitism and violence, and suddenly Islamist terrorists strike New York, their place of refuge and murder nearly 3000 innocent people, including several Russian Jews. Meanwhile, in Israel, all the close relatives and friends of members of the Russian community here feel continually under siege from what they perceive as the same enemy. Many Russian Jews have already died serving in the IDF and as civilians in terrorist attacks.

The bitter truth is that there is no safe haven, whether from criminals, as in the case of Marshalik, or from terrorism. That sense of vulnerability, the unfairness of it, has caused many Russian Jews to look for answers and solutions to the extreme right--advocates of militance, hatred and repression vis a vis Muslims/Arabs/Palestinians, whether in Israel or the U.S. That is understandable, but the truth is that approach is unethical, unJewish and unworkable. There ARE reasons for fear--nothing is safe or guaranteed in life, whereever one lives. Any of us can get shot on the streets of Greenwich Village or Brighton Beach tomorrow, any of us could be blown to smithereens by a terrorist bomb at any moment, just as we may, God forbid, come down with incurable cancer like Elizabeth Edwards. It is also true that there ARE many Muslims and Palestinians who hate Jews, Israelis and Americans enough to blow them up as suicide bombers. There are also many Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians--many more than the bombers--who would like to live normal lives and want their children to live better lives than they have had. The question is which set of of Israeli or U.S. policies will stimulate Muslim/Arab/Palestinian hatred and violence and which set of policies will strengthen the will to moderation and compromise--accepting the permanence of Israel among other things--as a condition for giving their children better lives.

I believe passionately that the Likud line and the Bush line only stimulates Muslim hatred and violence and makes all of us a lot less safe than we would be otherwise, whether in Jerusalem or New York. Muslims are human beings, just like we are, and we have to reach out to them, communicate and seek to find common ground. The path of peace and reconciliation is difficult and fraught with dangers, but the path of confrontation and repression is ultimately more dangerous and dimishes the humanity within us.

isho ras balnoi, sick again

2007-03-07T18:38:00.000-08:00

sorry druzya, but have been laid up all week with a very unpleasant urinary tract infection, caused by a prostate biopsy. (I am actually writing on Friday, March 9, not Wednesday). The very good news--They determined that I do not have prostate cancer. So I went out with Tanya and a friend and toasted my health with margeritas (I have to admit I've been drinking more of those than vodka shots since our Mexico idyll). Everything looked rosy, but two days later I developed a high fever and the last week has been extremely painful in my lower sections, but I will spare you all further clinical details of my suffering, which some may believe is just punishment for my left-wing apostasy.:) Anyway, the worst is over and should be back on my feet and active again on the Russian-Jewish-Muslim-whatever else political/social/psychological beat by Monday. Now a couple of quick responses to Locke and MazeartistLocke, I am glad that you acknowledge that there are plenty of Russian immigrants miscreants who ripped off Uncle Sam to get home attendants and much much more, as well as Mexicans, Ecuadorians and others who may also have negaged in such sins. Some of the Russian Jews advocating restrictions on immigration at the recent AJC event I mentioned in an earlier posting painted the ripoff artists as all being Latinos, blacks and other swarthy types (nothing about nice lilly-white Russian Jews) and said that the US ought to do more to keep these types out of the US and deport the illegals--even a well-spoken young lady in her 20's who acknowledged that she and her mother had once been illegal themselves, but 'never took a penny from anyone, pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps' etc.

It seems to me that the whole US immigration system is "cheres zhopu" as you say, but it should be reformed to be more open and welcoming to all, regardless of race, color, nationality, rather than more restrictive and focused on maintaining "European" character, as several argued at that AJC event. The last time US immigration policy was configured that way, America barred the doors to Jews while Hitler murdered six million. For the American racists of that day and of this day too--people like Pat Buchanan and others on the Republican right, the words 'Jews' and 'European' do not go together. When they say 'European', they mean blonde and Aryan. My advice to Russian Jews ardently embracing the American right, evangelical and otherwise, should learn some more American history and carefully check the histories of your new bedfellows before engaging in full fraternization.

Now to Mazeartist, who took me to task recently for linking one of my postings (Hope and Inspiration) to a Haaretz story that highlighted Israeli Jews and Palestinians on Tu B'Shvat replanting Palestinian olive trees in the West Bank ripped out by settlers. Mazeartist uses the term "alleged" to describe said thuggish and criminal behaviour by the settlers, suggesting Haaretz made the whole thing up because it is a lefty paper. Well, first of all, Harertz is by far and away Israel's premiere paper and its the quality and veracity of its reporting is unchallenged and very distinct from its editorial page. In any case, the actions by settlers to uproot Palestinian olive groves has been well documented by many other newspapers--Israeli and international, and by organizations like B'Tzelem, Rabbis for Human Rights, Amnesty International etc etc. But I know what Mazeartist will reply, 'Its all a left wing conspiracy persecuting the poor settlers and even if their heavily armed second generation do sometimes go out and chop down Pali olive trees and steal their fruit, thats OK, because Palestinians do that or even worse things to Jews. So its OK for Jews to act like gangsters if the other side is doing the same, Mazeartist? I understand you are a deeply religious person, a deeply devout Jew, but I must tell you I dont see how that moral equation fits into Judaism or any other decent moral system. Mazeartist, I dont care what the other side does or doesnt do, Jews are not supposed to act like thugs. Full Stop. That is not about being on the left or on the right. Thats about menschlekeit, about being a ben or bat adam, about human decency. I'm sorry if your extreme sectarianism makes it impossible for you to understand a moral principle that blindingly clear.

new articles at Jewish Week

2007-03-03T12:45:00.000-08:00

I have two pieces in the Jewish Week this week, which I am attaching here and here

The first one concerns a settler group from the West Bank enticing American Jews to buy apartments in settlements on the other side of the separation fence, which is dismaying evidence that fence or no fence, the settlement drive continues apace. second piece an interview with Gideon Aronoff, the executive director of HIAS, who makes a powerful argument that American Jewry must stand up and be counted in the fight for comprehensive immigration reform, including a path for citizenship for 12 million "illegals"--He urges us to remember that in 1941, European Jewish "illegals" were desperately trying to get into the U.S. on false visas--the alternative was usually death at the hands of the Nazis. He also says American Jews should oppose government discrimination against would be immigrants from Muslim countries. I would be interested in the reactions of readers to these two stories.

responses to participants

2007-02-23T18:53:00.000-08:00

A number of people have responded to my "Putin Is Right" posting and several others.On Putin, there was one comment pointing out that the Russian President himself is an imperial bully, harrasing Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, etc., so who is he to lecture the U.S. on bossing around the rest of the world? I agree that Putin is a bully, a murderer of crusading journalists and an uzerpater, but for now at least he is a regional bully, whereas the U.S. claims its right to unilaterally lord it over the rest of the world. It is for that reason that Putin's speech in Munich resonated far beyond revanchist Russians of the red-brown variety, but caused amens in Europe, the Muslim world and many places south of the Rio Grande.

Interestingly, a number of other people, all Russian-American Jews, responded to my argument--both on and off the forum, in surprisingly favorable tones in reference to Putin, even in tones of pride in the rennaissance of Russian power he has overseen. I have long been fascinated how certain Russian Jews who tend to be Republicans in the U.S. political context and Likudniks in the Israeli political context, also evince, almost in spite of themselves, a fondness for Putin and pride in Russian power. I guess American observers like me see that as more of a contradiction than many of my Russian-Jewish friends do, and perhaps they have a point. After all, what Putin, Bush and Bibi have in common is a fondness for the application of power without niceties of compassion and humanism that liberals insist upon. Silnaya ruka y fsyo. To me, all three of the above mentioned guys are nasty sons of bitches, and Putin even more so than the other two--but again, more of the world feels oppressed by America these days than they do by Russia, which is the point I tried to make in 'Putin Is Right'.

Tom Friedman also had an excellent op-ed piece on this theme in the NYT a couple of weeks ago (sorry I forgot to make a link here), pointing out that when the U.S. insisted during Clinton's time in expanding NATO into Poland, Slovakia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lativa, and Lithuania, etc, what we accomplished was to discredit Russian liberalism and to help pave the way for Putinism. And what benefit did we get out it, Friedman asked tongue in cheek, the addition of the Czech Navy to NATO?

My friend Locke is for McCain. I'm not. McCain is an utter hypocrite, now endorsing the Christian right, calling for the outlawing of abortion and all the rest of the crap those people push. He obviously doesnt believe it, but in his desperate desire to get elected, he is ready to kiss the popa of the American far right. Let him enjoy the company of the Falwells and Robertsons, people he once rightly called fanatics. As for Locke's other point, that my giving my rhetorical blessing to Jews with the decency and guts to go to the West Bank to help replant Palestinian olive trees that other Jews (settlers) viciously uprooted, feels good in the way that wetting my pants feels good, he is right that I ought to be out there with them rather than sitting in the safety of New Jersey and blessing their actions. But, Locke, I have met many imams for peace; I attended a conference in Seville, Spain last March with more than 100 of such imams from around the world (International Conference of Imams and Rabbis), including a number from Gaza. In recent weeks, I have visited two mosques in New York and dialogued with Muslims who want an end to killing on both sides and explictely condemn 9-11 and other acts of terror by Islamic extremists.

The idea that there are no Muslims who want peace and are willing to speak out against extremism is one that Jews enjoy repeating to each other on the apparent theory that endlessly repeating a falsehood and shutting ones eyes and ears to all evidence to the contrary, must make what you are saying to be true. Locke, believe me, reaching out to the other side and learning to understand and trust each other is a lot harder--but also a lot more rewarding--than wetting one's pants. If you would like, I can arrange to take you to the next such dialogue I'll be going to in New York, scheduled for the end of March.

Living La Vida Loca

2007-02-22T09:22:00.001-08:00

Postcard from Cabo San Lucas

I apologize to readers that I haven’t filed in so long—I am just completing a week’s vacation in Cabo San Lucas, at the tip of Baja California, together with Tanya, her daughter Hannah, my brother Dan from Oakland, California and his daughter Twyla, a student at Barnard. We had a wonderful time amidst the cactus, beautiful beaches and superb Mexican restaurants, and lots of drinking of various strange concoctions, but also had a stressful adventure I wanted to share briefly. Rubyjewsday, readers, beware, if you travel to Mexico and decide to rent a car, ALWAYS pay for full coverage insurance and not just Liability. I did the latter, thinking I am a good driver and why pay the extra $15 a day, but in the middle of our trip, on a lonely road in the middle of the desert, our car was hit hard from behind by a local driver and sustained somewhere from $6000-$8000 in damages. Even though the accident was clearly not our fault, it turned out that the insurance of the other driver, who was a very nice guy, had expired, and the company said we were 100 percent liable for the damages. We decided to fight, and got some local lawyers, who were wonderful people and hardly wanted to take any money (I ended up paying them $300 for half a days work and taking them to dinner and they told it was way to much money). They took us to a Mexican consumer protection bureau called Profeco, which filed papers on our behalf and said they couldn’t force us to pay before leaving the country, but could only file charges against us and I warned the company that I am a journalist who would write nasty things about them, etc, etc. We called our credit card company and instructed them not to pay any large sums to a rent a car company, which was fortunate, because almost immediately thereafter they tried to collect and found the account closed. I also called the U.S. Consulate, and the official there reported that the company was considering calling the police (los federales) to prevent from leaving the country without paying. Our lawyers said, “Don’t worry, they can’t do that,” but I was VERY worried and considering caving in, but then, three days after the accident, the company called and said that the other driver had agreed to pay and we only owed for the week rental we had originally agreed too.

It was all very stressful, but also fascinating; a chance to get into the workings of Mexican society, instead of the usual lying on the beach and sipping pina colados. Overall, I was enchanted with the Mexicans, a warm, cultured, artistic and very intelligent, people, which is relevant to Russian Jewish community, because several weeks ago I was at a debate of the Russian leadership group of the American Jewish Committee, where there was a liberal-conservative debate on immigration (among other issues) and the conservative side was arguing that even though they themselves only arrived 10-15 years ago as refugees (and a few as illegal immigrants), the U.S. should now build a wall and keep out the swarthy Mexicans, who immediately go on welfare( as though untold thousands of Russian new arrivals had not done exactly the same) and thereby preserve America’s ‘European’ character. I had better not go into my feelings about the hypocrisy of this line of thinking here as I may write about the immigration debate in the Russian community for the Jewish Week, but I wish some of the people making those arguments had a chance to meet and experience the Mexico and Mexicans Tanya and I got to know in this wonderful restful and zestful week. They were nothing short of an inspiration and no less fully, resplendently human and equal to any Russian Jew I ever met.

As has happened many times before, I felt proud and happy to be a Jew who is part and parcel of the larger human family and mi hermanos and hermanas (brother and sisters) come in all colors and ethnicities (Mexicans, Africans, Chinese and Palestinians, as well as Europeans and Americans; Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus. Only together, as one collective humanity, can we build a more peaceful and ecologically sustainable world. The alternative is collective destruction.

I will write on my return tonight responses to some of the posts I received concerning my “Putin is Right” piece.

Putin Is Right

2007-02-11T19:43:00.000-08:00

Let me say from the top that I yield to no one in my detestation of Vladimir Putin and all that he has wrought. Here is a ex-KGB thug who has turned Russia into a thuggish kleptocracy fueled by oil wealth and totally dominated by the new version of the KGB known as FSB. Putin runs an autocratic regime based on the mailed fist (silnaya ruka) that casually murders its opponents, whether in Moscow or in London. Internationally, Putin’s Russia bullies weaker, resource-poor neighbors like Georgia and Ukraine, irresponsibly shares nuclear technology with Iran and uses Europe’s addiction on its natural gas to keep the EU from challenging its behavior.

Yet despite all of that, Putin was right on target when he gave a speech at a security conference in Munich featuring the participation of DefSec Robert Gates, Sen John McCain, Joe Lieberman and others in which he accused the U.S. of forcing its will on the rest of the world.
Putin accused the United States of making the world a more dangerous place by pursuing policies aimed at making it "one single master." Attacking the concept of a "unipolar" world in which the United States was the sole superpower, he said: "What is a unipolar world? No matter how we beautify this term it means one single center of power, one single center of force, and one single master. "It has nothing in common with democracy because that is the opinion of the majority taking into account the minority opinion," he told the gathering of top security and defense officials. Putin archly added that “People are always teaching us democracy, but the people who teach us democracy don't want to learn it themselves," he said.

Incredibly, in all of the U.S. press coverage I’ve seen of the speech, in the NYT, Washington Post, and elsewhere, the focus has been almost exclusively on asking whether oil-rich Putin was trying to start a new Cold War, without focusing on the obvious; that most of the world emphatically agrees with Putin’s position that the unipolar American hegemony that has ruled the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been bad for the world. Despite the collapse of its only rival, the U.S., even under the relatively pacific Clinton regime, kept on building arms—including nuclear arms—as though there was some rational reason to do so, and poisoned westernization trends in Russia during the 90’s by expanding NATO to include all the former Soviet satellites and the Baltic states. Bush started off in 2001 by tearing up the 30-year-old anti-ballistic missile treaty (it now plans to place ABM’s in Poland and the Czech Republic, and of course, going hog wild after 9-11; sending U.S. forces to Central Asia and then invading Iraq despite the overwhelming opposition of the international community to that invasion. Bush and company refused to abide by any international agreements and tore up the Kyoto Protocol, postponing for a decade the efforts of the world community to try to deal with global warming.

Putin said the United States had repeatedly overstepped its national borders on questions of international security, a policy he said had made the world less, not more, safe.
"Unilateral actions have not resolved conflicts but have made them worse," Putin said, adding that force should only be used when the option is backed by the United Nations Security Council. "This is very dangerous. Nobody feels secure any more because nobody can hide behind international law," he said. Putin also said the increased use of force was "causing an arms race with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons." All of the above is very true and right on target.

Are we so blind in this country that we can’t see how much the world; not only Russia, but China, Latin America, the Muslim world and Europe as well, resents the U.S. dictat, and it is that sense of being pushed around and disregarded, as much as the presence of the obnoxious George Bush in the presidency, that is making this country hated more and more around the world. In the wake of the bloody debacle of Iraq, which was caused by the hubris and arrogance of the neo-cons, we can only hope that the next administration will ‘get it’ that the age of absolute U.S. domination of the world is over. The U.S. may still have the military razzle-dazzle to sweep into a third world nation and overthrow its government in the face of world opinion, but Iraq has shown that we can’t do the follow through and force our will and version of reality on a (dissolving) Middle Eastern society with very different priorities.

So far, Bush, with his arrogant self-righteousness and unilateralism, has played completely into the hands of bin-Laden and his ilk, immeasurably strengthening Islamic extremism by invading the heart of the Arab/Muslim world and trying to create some new version of Texas there. The U.S. is not in a position to ‘do’ Iraq or Agfghanistan on its own; it needs the help of the world and that help will come at a price; no more unilateral decision making out of Washington, whether by reactionary Bushies or a restored (Hillary) Clinton regime. Putin, nasty and thuggish though he is, deserves credit for saying out loud what most of the rest of the world has been feeling for quite a long time.

Sophia Romma's Absolute Clarity

2007-02-05T19:34:00.000-08:00

The other night, Tanya and I went to a theater on MacDougal Street in the Village to see an off-Broadway play called Absolute Clarity and had a brief, but rewarding encounter with the playwright, Sophia Romma (ne Murashovsky), a wildly talented exemplar of the new generation of Russian-American Jewish writers alongside Gary Shteyngart and Lara Vapnyar. Romma, now in her early 30’s came here from the Soviet Union at the age of six and has somehow found time and energy to get both a BFA and MFA at NYU and a PhD in 19th Century Russian literature at the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. She teaches American Literature at Touro College, runs a screenwriting workshop at the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center and sometimes teaches screewritin g at Mc Gill University in Montreal. She is clearly an intensely mezhdunarodnya soul, a creation of a particularist ‘Russian Jewish intelligentsia in America’ sensibility, which is by its very nature extremely cosmopolitan.

A writer of poetry and prose, Romma has written three plays which were produced at the famous La MaMa Theater; Love In the Eyes of Hope Dies Last, a journey through Russian-Jewish immigration in a series of eight playlets; Coyote, Take Me There, a surrealistic work on the ordeals of immigration and the corruption of the American Dream as experienced by Russian Jews and Mexican immigrants; and Defenses of Prague, a story of revenge set among gypsies in 1968 Prague. She is author of the film Poor Liza, a love story set in 19th Century Russia which was directed by Slava Tsukerman, another Russian-Jewish expatriate who made the memorably psychedelic and brainy film Liquid Sky back in the 1980’s.

Romma’s last play before Absolute Clarity was called Shoot Me In the Cornfields, a time travel extravaganza involving characters finding love during the siege of Stalingrad and during the Moscow coup of 1991, which, I myself had the privilege of witnessing. Actually, I had thought that was the play we would be seeing, but instead found that Absolute Clarity was a ‘transplanted to New York’ version of a play by the famous Russian playwright Edvard Radzinski, who collaborated with her on the project. I was a bit disappointed because I had expected to see a play focused on the Russian Jewish experience, but Absolute Clarity turned out to be an enjoyable absurdist romp through the modern downtown New York cultural and artistic scene, involving vivid characters who revolve around Claire, clearly Romma’s alter ego, a prematurely hip teenage gamin who speaks in rhyme. Claire struggles to actualize herself as an artist, is terribly cruel to her mother, a lounge singer who was once a stripper, torments and seduces a middle aged artist, and hangs out with an outlaw jazz/hip-hop group, whose members rap, sing and make music in black, Jewish, Latin and Russian/Georgian rhythms. The play’s director, by the way, is another transplanted Russian Jew, Yuri Joffe.

There are some other memorable characters, including a hilarious black chanteuse, a slimy, joyously corrupt Italian-American judge, with perfect Curtis Sliwa diction, a bitchy, seductive Frenchwoman. It is obvious that Romma has a wonderful ear for language, accent, and expression of cultural distinctiveness. And she wrote all of the jazzy, hip hop music in the play, which is itself a tour de force

Before the play. I spoke briefly to Romma, a slight curly-haired figure with a warmth and easy informality that contrasts with the creative forces—some of them evidently dark—churning inside her. As she talks about her life and her art, it is obvious that she is fully at home and artistically engaged in both New York and Moscow and interacts effortlessly with the finest artistic and literary minds in both capitals. Let me say for the record that I am more than a little jealous that I don’t get to have her life, but, nu, shto deliyat? Anyway, its fun to be in the presence of youthful genius. Romma said that Absolute Clarity which is about “striving for happiness amidst betrayal” is her attempt to write a play along the lines of one of her artistic inspirations--Tennessee Williams—“to have a go at writing something more meaty than I usually do.”

Romma spends a lot of time in Moscow and loves living there, “because it remains a place where you don’t need a calling card like you do here. You can just drop in on people spontaneously, although it’s a good idea to bring a honey cake with you.” But hasn’t Moscow gone all glitzy and wildly materialistic? “Yes, that is happening of course, and I dislike glitziness whether in Moscow or New York. But I still find plenty of people there who believe in love, beauty, poetry and humanism.”

Anyway, rubyjewsday readers, I recommend you go and see Absolute Clarity, which is to run at the Players Theater from January 31 to February 25. Yes, it’s an America-focused play, but it comes with plenty of Russkaya dusha.

hope and inspiration

2007-02-04T08:14:00.000-08:00

As long as there remain Jews and Palestinians like these to counter the haters and bigots on both sides, there is still hope

limited, modified mea culpa

2007-02-03T11:46:00.000-08:00

Nemo and others have complained that I should have read the Jimmy Carter book before commenting on the controversy surrounding it. Having now read it, I concede I found it more unbalanced in favor of the Palestinians than I had expected. I stand by the main point I made in my previous postings on this question; that it was outrageous for Alan Dershowitz to shout before Jewish gatherings that Carter has "blood on his hands" for his insistence that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians is profoundly wrong, or for other critics to label as an "anti-Semite" the former president who worked his ass off to help Israel to get its first peace treaty with an Arab nation. However, it was a mistake on my part to plunge headlong into the controversy without, as Nemo says, having done my homework, and I hereby acknowledge my mistake. So what, you may ask, was it about the Carter book that turned me off? I agree fully with his premise that the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinians over the past 40 years is morally wrong and has contributed mightily to the perpetuation and intensification of the conflict. But Carter sees the occupation as the central cause, the causus belli, for the endless, every worsening Israeli-Palestinian conflict; riting that Palestinian suicide bombing and other violence, while wrong, is simply a "reaction" to Israeli occupation and would stop if Israel carried out a withdrawal to the lines which may or may not have been agreed to by Israeli and Palestinian neogitators at Taba in December 2000, with Israel leaving all but about 2-3 percent of the WB and the Arab populated parts of East Jerusalem in exchange for full peace and recognition (Dennis Ross says both sides signed off on this, Carter says Israel never really did).

Whatever. The problem with that analysis is, of course, that there is a very sizable chunk of the Palestinians, today represented by Hamas, which won the last Palestinian elections which do not accept Israel within ANY borders, and see such a peace treaty as only a way station to their long term goal of making Israel disappear. Also, obviously that the Palestinians, as then represented by the PLO, did not accept Israel's existence before 1967, and only did so at the 1992 Oslo Agreement, while never giving up on the right of return that if fully implemented would destroy Israel as a Jewish state.

I certainly agree with Carter's point that hard-line Israeli policies and never-ending settlement building have pushed more and more Palestinians into the extremist camp and undermined the moderates, most damagingly in the post-Oslo period when for a fleeting time there was a 70 percent majority of Palestinians in favor of permanent peace with Israel. But the same thing can be said in reverse; that continuation of Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians after Oslo destroyed the Israeli majority in favor of the agreements. The main point is that Carter declines to grapple seriously with Palestinian rejectionism, except to blame it on Israeli policies. That is much too facile. Palestinian rejectionism of the Jewish state project began at least 50 years BEFORE the 1967 war. Also, while the former president rightly expresses great moral indignation at Israeli policies which oppress and torment the Palestinians, one does not feel a similar sympathy from him for an Israeli population which has suffered grievous losses and trauam due to ongoing Palestinian terrorism. The problem with that kind of selective moral outrage is that it just contributes to further polarization and closoing of minds. Yes, 3-4 times of Palestinians have died in Israeli-Palestinian violence since the explosion of the second intifada in 2000, but that still leaves something like 1000 Israelis who were killed by Palestinians during the same period. They and those who loved them deserve every bit as much compassion as Palestinian victims do.

The reality is that only a moral witness that gets that BOTH sides are suffering horribly in the present situation and deserve equal love and compassion has a chance to elicit healing and reconciliation rather than the opposite impact. Many people in the pro-Israel camp cannot find it in themselves to feel human compassion for Palestinians and plenty of people in the pro-Palestine camp cannot find any compassion for Israelis. I had expected more from Carter, a deeply religious Christian who has done much wonderful work around the world for peace and democracy since leaving the presidency. His book left me feeling sad. To the extent that he confronts Jews and says insistently 'look at the hideousness and moral squalor of the occupation straight in the face' he is doing us a moral service. But to the extent that he seems hard-hearted and unable to feel Israeli and Jewish pain, as he does in this book, he undercuts the usefulness of the whbole project and and a potential opportunity for honesty, truth and healing slips away.

American Jewish Committee Leadership Program

2007-01-31T18:29:00.000-08:00

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.”

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

2007-01-27T12:28:00.000-08:00

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

Sam Kliger's tribute to Yuri Shtern

2007-01-22T06:47:00.000-08:00

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.

In Defense of Jimmy Carter

2007-01-21T10:44:00.000-08:00

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.

Yuri Shtern z"l

2007-01-16T07:59:00.000-08:00

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.

Thoughts on the Brook-Krasny Inaguration Ceremony

2007-01-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

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.

thanks to Martin Horwitz and Anonymous for thoughtful comments

2007-01-04T18:56:00.000-08:00

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...

S’NOVIM GODOM!

2007-01-03T16:18:00.000-08:00

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.

responses to several who wrote in about my last posting

2006-12-24T13:27:00.000-08:00

My last posting in response to Boris Gorbis generated a lot of mail, most of it not very complementary. As experienced as I am in this kind of give and take, and as determined as I am to bring a different perspective to Russian Jews, its painful to receive many of these messages, both on a personal level and because of what it says about how hardened so many people are, how convinced they are that we have nothing to look forward to but endless bloodletting. This attitude makes me very sad, but the attitude is clearly informed by the reality we all confront today and must struggle to transform.
Elena says I am incredibly naïve, and she doesn’t want to say ’stupid’, but clearly thinks so. Elena, I like to think I am neither and I also suspect I have spent more of my life in Israel than you have (correct me if I am wrong, Elena). So let me pose again this question to the collective of Soviet Jews in the U.S.; “Why do you suppose you are greater authorities on Israeli reality than someone like myself?’ I am more than willing to grant that you are greater authorities on Soviet reality than I am, but not Israeli or American reality. Is it just possible that you are distorting reality by seeing the political situations in both Israel and the U.S. through an ideological template formed in reaction to a no longer existent totalitarian construct called the Soviet Union?
An anonymous responder who loves America nevertheless considers this country "zemlya nepugannyx idiotov" because we supposedly lean over backwards to understand the adversary’s point of view and because of that failing Khrushchev had us “beat by decades.” Well, the last time I looked, Khruschev’s system was on the ash heap of history and the writer of these lines was living in America, not the Soviet Union, so it would appear the American system, including our effort to understand the adversary’s point of view, worked a hell of a lot better than the supposedly more realistic and less naïve Soviet system. It ought to be obvious to any moderately sophisticated person that if you are likely to be far more effective in overcoming an adversary by understanding him/her than by reducing him/her to a stick figure of evil. Indeed, the West subverted the Soviet system by understanding that Russians were real people, not devils, who were attracted by consumer culture.
The respondent argues the fact that I only mentioned a few Israeli-initiated homocides shows Israelis are better or more moral than Arabs. Well, Boris was basically telling me there were NO Israeli initiated homocides, that this is stick figure good guys against bad guys. In fact, I could easily have given a longer list if that had been my intent, and certainly could have included Sabra and Shatilla, a horrendous massacre of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese Phalangists which would not have taken place if Ariel Sharon hadn’t sealed off those refugee camps, preventing anyone from escaping and then inserting the Phalangists into the camps with the mission of “cleansing” them. And then, surprise, surprise, three days later it turns out the Phalange had killed 800 people. Yes, the Phalangists did the killing, but Sharon enabled them to do so, and as the Kahan Commission ruled, should clearly have known that was likely to happen.
But I am NOT trying to prove that Jews are worse killers than Arabs. I am trying to show that violence begets violence, killing begets killing, and in such a situation, nobody’s hands are clean. The premise that the other side is the darkest evil and we are goody goodies who are not capable of killing innocent civilians just because we are Jews, is a lot of buba meises and skazkee and I am frankly surprised that observers of the situation as intelligent as Boris Gorbis can take such nonsense seriously. In reality, that way of thinking is nothing more than willful self-delusion.
Having argued what angels we Jews are, the writer then offers the analysis that the Palestinians will see the light only after they, like the Germans in WWII, have been pounded into rubble, adding, “The bag of flower seeds works best if sown on scorched earth. Denazification of Germany is an excellent model for the dehamazification of Gaza.”
What the writer doesn’t get is that unlike the situation in which the Allies far outnumbered the Axis, Israel is not in a position to occupy and transform the Arab/Muslim world, since there are 6 million Israelis and 1.2 billion Muslims. Besides, to dehamasify Gaza and the West Bank, Israel would need to offer the Palestinians something besides endless occupation and the placing of Jewish settlements on their land. The U.S. occupied Germany after WW2, but it did not build permanent American settlements there, with the idea of grabbing a piece of Germany and making it part of America. As long as Israel continues building settlements, it contributes directly to the Hamasification of Palestine, not the other way around.

As for David Tsal, he tells us that he ran up against hatred of Jews and hostility to Israel when he tried to dialogue with Arabs. I’m sure that is true and I’m sure that was painful, but what kind of response would an Arab who encounter if he/she came to dialogue with some of the people on this forum? Hatred and suspicion is a two way street. As for the red heifer, I remember that episode well, and the point was that there are real live Jews, people who live in the Old City known as the Temple Mount Faithful and real live Evangelical Christians supporting them who actually believe that when the red heifer appears, the Dome of the Rock will disappear and the Third Temple will go up. Check out this web site for an example of this. So its not just about Muslim paranoia in this cause (though there is plenty of that) but real Jews with guns, some of whom have plotted in the past to blow up the Dome of the Rock and/or Al-Aqsa (a bunch of them were arrested in 1984, if my memory serves me right, preparing such a plot).
Tsal then goes on to caricature those who fight for peace as being those with blood on our hands, rather than those on both sides, Arab and Jewish, who perpetuate the killing.
From his comfortable exile in LA, he writes the following; “So who made me hate Arabs? Arabs themselves. Only Arabs themselves. Do I like it? I hate it. But then, I must do what I must do. There is no "want" or "like" here. There is no other choice. We are destined to fight and to kill. The only other choice is to be killed. This is not our doing; this situation came from above and ago. I would wish there were another choice, except that I am not interested in pipedreams and empty wishes.”

So David hates and has no choice but to kill or be killed, except that other Jews besides himself will likely have to do the killing. And I am the one with blood on my hands? Get real, David.

Anyway, nidaber, lets talk further.

My response to Boris Gorbis

2006-12-18T20:43:00.000-08:00

Here is my response to Boris Gorbis’ "The Bag of Flower Seeds Or the Sad Disorder of Moral Blindness". I appreciate Boris’ warm words about me and reciprocate his affection. Yes, we have have very different positions of how to save Israel, but both of us love Israel passionately, and it is not only healthy, but absolutely essential, to have this ongoing debate. So here is my response to Boris’ heartfelt words…

Boris starts by asserting that Walter Ruby is deluded, that I don’t know the Israel that exists, but rather am a spaced out American hippie with some tra-la-la emotional pie-in-the-sky yafe nefesh version of the lion lying down with the lamb. Well, not to pull rank here, but I spent over five years of my life living in Israel and speak good Hebrew. That doesn’t make me the world’s greatest expert on Israeli reality, but I know a thing or two about the place. I have covered Israel as a journalist for many years. I feel Israel in my kishkes. So I am not some starry eyed nincompoop, offering illogical ideas from afar.

Yes, when Boris and I sat together in a hotel lobby in Ramat Gan for an hour a couple of months ago, I did share with him my vision of Israelis and Palestinians finding a way to live in peace based in part of peoples’ diplomacy and allowing children on both sides as he puts it archly, to have “a bomb-free lunch time.” Absolutely! If we can’t aspire to such a future, then what is there to believe in? Is Boris ready to accept the prospect of perpetual war, with all that implies for the children of Israel? I believe with every fiber of my being, based on journalistic work spanning decades among both Israelis and Palestinians that considerable majorities on both sides want the killing and suffering to end. It’s their kids and grandkids whose lives are on the line, and I don’t think most would appreciate Boris telling them essentially that there is no hope for an end to the killing.

Unlike Boris, I think the lady with the bag of seed was on the right track. I believe passionately that if and when Israelis and Jews, Palestinians and Arabs, begin meeting, dialoguing and forming personal connections, they will not be able any more to see each other as abstractions—as shadowy symbols of evil as Boris sees the entire Palestinian/Arab collective. The Oslo process failed in large part because not enough effort was made by both sides to form that web of personal connections. There ought to have been a big organized effort to have Israeli doctors meet Palestinian doctors, teachers meeting teachers, and Israeli and Palestinian scout groups hiking together on both sides of the green line. That it didn’t happen was partly the fault of the Israeli peace camp—much of which preferred to separate from the Palestinians, rather than engage with them as human beings. But if the two sides don’t engage with each other as fellow human beings, they will never trust each other enough to take the very real risks involved in making peace. The failure of Oslo showed that a small elite of diplomats and government officials meeting in Norway and coming up with some complicated agreement is not enough to end a century of hostility. There needs to be sustained grass roots involvement.

How do I know? Because I have taken part in such efforts for years. I was part of a group that brought Israeli and Palestinian youngsters to a summer camp in Spain and watched them connect with each other. It wasn’t easy and there were setbacks, but by the end of the three week session meaningful relationships based on real affection had been formed. I doubt many of those kids were able to keep those connections alive because of the violence that ensued and the sealing of the two populations off from each other. But I believe those kids were changed profoundly by what they experienced and the Israeli ones will never be able to dismiss “them” as “the Other” some form of absolute evil, because they got to know kids named Ahmed and Maha and the Palestinian kids met Moshe and Orly.

And thousands of other brave Israelis and Palestinians who did take part in such efforts were changed and when conditions begin to improve will begin again to push forward on such efforts. Please click the following link for one such effort which has yielded important positive results in stimulating meaningful dialogue between Israeli Jews and Arabs, including rabbis and imams.

Boris, I agree with you that Soviet Jews learned a lot that I did not through their bitter experience over 70 years. You learned how to survive in an inhuman system where your identity as a Jew was denigrated and crushed every day on the pages of Pravda and Izvestia, by hearing the word zhid on the tramvai, being blackballed from MGU and a thousand other insults and hurts. I have enormous respect and love for Soviet Jews for surviving as intact Jews and human beings through all of that and having helped to destroy that system and having become free Jews and human beings. But I would argue strongly that what you endured in the USSR doesn’t make Soviet Jews the ultimate authority on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which goes back decades before Soviet Jews arrived on the scene and has a whole different set of characteristics. The dynamic there is different than the Soviet Union under Stalin or Brezhnev. So it’s not, as you suggest, about being a “good Jew” who kisses the ass of the KPCC. It is about finding a way for the six million Jews of Israel to survive in a part of the world inhabited by hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims. How is that going to happen? Not by force of arms. Despite Boris’ martial instincts we can’t kill or subjugate them all. In fact, it turns out that even the mighty U.S. can’t impose its will on Iraq. Israel cant do it either.

Boris and I may not agree on much, but we share a belief in Israel’s moral right to exist over the Arabs’ moral right to destroy it. From the time I spent a year in Israel at the age of 12 back in 1962 (do the math), I have known in my gut that if Israel were to be destroyed I would not want to go on living. The question is how do we ensure Israel’s survival—by Boris’ way or mine? It is clear to me that the only way to guarantee Israel’s survival in the long term is through reconciliation with its neighbors and that egregious and unnecessary acts like grabbing their land, building settlements and holding people in cities like Hebron and Nablus under perpetual military occupation is not the way to achieve such a reconciliation.

Boris starts telling us about admittedly terrible acts committed by Palestinians, like tearing apart the bodies of Jews and demands if there has been even one such case among Jews. Yes, I remember a mob in Bet Shean back in the 80’s tearing apart several Arabs who carried out a bombing attack in a local market. Their fury was understandable, but yes, it did happen. Jews did tear Arabs into pieces. Nor can it be said that Jews have never murdered Arabs in cold blood just because they are Arabs, have never beaten or humiliated them just because they are Arabs. What about Baruch Goldstein or Ami Popper who methodically mowed down innocent Arabs? What about members of the Jewish underground in the West Bank who plotted to blow up a Palestinian school in Jerusalem? What about West Bank settlers who behave sadistically toward Arabs, use every opportunity to humiliate and enrage them, and delight in hacking down their olive groves? What about Israeli soldiers and Border Police who have been shown on many occasions to have unnecessarily killed Palestinians? What about soldiers at checkpoints who have prevented Palestinian women In labor from reaching hospitals on time; have allowed Palestinians who have heart attacks from getting to hospitals—allowing quite a few to die right there at the checkpoints.

So, Boris, don’t give me your self-righteous yerunda that the other side are stick figures of absolute evil and we are so clean and pure. The truth is that ongoing conflict causes cruelty by both sides, causes both sides to dehumanize the other to the point where it is easy to kill them, either with suicide bombs or katushyas on the Palestinian side or by dropping bombs from the sky or shooting live artillery fire into civilian areas of Gaza on the Israeli side. We do not destroy Muslim shrines? Well, Israeli extremists have been plotting for decades now to blow up the Dome of the Rock to make way for the third temple. The Shin Bet arrested a whole bunch of them back in the early 80’s when the plot had gotten to a serious point, but most served short jail terms or none at all.

We don’t engage in all the terrorist acts Boris lists that the Palestinians have committed? True, we don’t need to emply terrorism because we have a strong army to enforce a 40 year occupation on the Palestinians. They don’t have an army so they conduct their struggle by other means—very ugly ones. But how many Israelis and how many Palestinians were killed during the intifada? Four or five times as many Palestinians were killed and a big percentage of them were not terrorists but innocent civilians who got killed when the IDF turned downtown Gaza or Nablus into free-fire zones. Can you have the least bit of compassion for any of those victims, Boris? They too are human beings.

So there is great cruelty and acts of murderous violence on both sides and there will continue to be until the two sides find a way to end this horror. Many brave Israelis and Palestinians understand this and have tried to reach out to each other across the barricades. They understand that there can be no winners in the mutual bloodletting; only the blighting of the lives of this generation, the next and the one after that. It is indeed very unfortunate that so many ex-Soviet Jews are coming into this situation with the attitude that war is the only way because given the demographic weight of ex-Soviet aliyah, if those attitudes continue, it will make even further off the day that the two peoples reach reconciliation.

And finally, yes, with all my affection for Russian Jews, let me say directly that people who were dehumanized as zhidi and oppressed as a people, should not dehumanize and oppress another people. It is understandable why that happens, but it is shortsighted and morally wrong. Jews are not evil and Palestinians are not evil. They are two peoples claiming the same piece of land for the past 100 years and fighting each other for it. The experience of the last 100 years shows that neither side can vanquish the other. So despite the present day horror and bloodletting, despite militance and fundamentalism on both sides, sooner or later, there will be another serious attempt to find a way to peace. Our job, for the sake of the children of both Israel and Palestine, is to do whatever we can to make that day sooner rather than later.

Walter

N.J. public high school teacher: If you dont accept Jesus, you'll go to hell

2006-12-17T19:30:00.000-08:00

for those in the Russian Jewish community who continue to believe that right-wing Christian fundamentalists are our best friends and allies, check out this piece from the NY Times about an 11th grade public school teacher in Kearny, just across the river from Manhattan, who taught his students that dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark and that people who dont believe in Jesus go straight to hell. And kol hakavod to the feisty student who taped the teacher's ramblings and put them on the Internet. Questions to lovers of the Christian fundies; what if your child had been in that class and forced to listen to his/her teacher affirm that Jews are doomed to eternal hellfire?

Avigdor Lieberman's press conference

2006-12-17T19:11:00.000-08:00

Avigdor Lieberman’s ‘press conference’ before the Russian language media at the Israeli Consulate in New York last week was one of the stranger media events this reporter has covered in over 30 years in the business—an ‘off the record’ press conference.

First, a cross section of New York’s Russian leadership attended the event, so that it had more of the feeling of a political rally than a press conference. The attitude toward Lieberman by nearly all of those in attendance was utterly reverential, and anything he would have said or done would have been greeted with cries of approval.

What Lieberman did was to confound expectation. The guy with a reputation as a loud mouth loose cannon given to making outrageous statements spoke in a soft monotone and said little that was controversial, Secondly, after giving opening remarks of about five minutes that were a repeat of things he had said many times before, Lieberman then said that everything he would say from that point on in response to questions from reporters would have to be ‘off the record’. Turn off your tape recorders and put away your cameras, members of the media.

Say what? An off the record press conference? Well, not exactly, because in response to cries of protest from several reporters, Lieberman grudgingly agreed that we lowly scribes could report what he said in general terms, as long as he wasn’t quoted directly. Or at least that was what he appeared to say in Russian, even though Israeli Consul General Aryeh Mekel, who was sitting alongside Lieberman but doesn’t speak Russian, said that Lieberman told him in Hebrew that his press conference was totally off the record, which meant that Lieberman’s name shouldn’t be anywhere in anything we should write—let him be referred to as a high government official or some such nonsense. But then, Lieberman didn’t say a lot that would make for good headlines anyway. So, what the hell, I’ll take my chances and briefly describe Lieberman’s remarks for the readers of Ruby Jewsday.

In a nutshell, Lieberman was selling himself in his new guise as the minister responsible for confronting the Iranian threat, and therefore as now being above the grubby details of politics; the staunchest defender not only of Israel’s survival, but of all of western civilization. Quite a portfolio for a boy from Kishinev who just a few years ago was directing thugs to rough up anti-Bibi delegates at the Likud convention! The situation today, Lieberman said, is like Munich 1938, and the West needs to stand united in full solidarity with Israel, rather than appeasing the anti-Semitic fanatics, which, he seemed to imply, is the course of sellouts like James Baker and the Iran Study Group. Lieberman said (and this clearly would have been the best sound bite of the press conference if we reporters could have used it), that the United States has the military strength to deal with Iran, but probably not enough political will. Elite opinion understands the great danger from Iran, but public opinion in the US doesn’t get it and is in a dangerously pacifist mood. It was not an issue of Republicans necessarily being more resolute than Democrats, he emphasized. He met with Tom Lantos and his namesake, Joe Lieberman on this trip, and they both are very tough on Iran.

So how can you serve in the government of a weakling like Olmert, Lieberman was asked by a hard-line reporter from one of the local Russian newspapers? I’m doing it for the sake of the national interest, not for my own political interest, Lieberman replied, his eyes turned reverentially upward. As though he is the only politician in Israel who puts the national interest over his own and as though going into the government did not give him a powerful leg up on Bibi in the contest to be the leader of the right in Israel. No, this Lieberman is a real tzaddik.

The main thing is to build a wall to wall coalition against the fanatics, extremists and Holocaust-deniers in Teheran, everything else is secondary. It’s a question of To Be or Not To Be. He has a point in that, what with the detestable Ahmedinijad riding high and hosting Holocaust denying scum like David Duke, but it is mildly troubling that someone like Lieberman who has taken some extremist positions himself, such as reading Israeli Arabs out of the national community even though they have been part of Israel far longer than himself and other ex-Soviet Jews, should be positioned at the head of that effort. Extremism against extremism.

Asked how Russian Jews in America can help in that effort, Lieberman said they should mobilize all of their efforts to influence the American Jewish community, Congress and the White House, to confront Iran and not allow it to develop a bomb. The hour is late and we all have to join in the effort.

Overall, it was an impressive showing, even with the annoying ‘off the record’ gambit. The guy is obviously a hell of a smart politician and seemed to confirm my prophecy of a few months ago that he will moderate his positions as he gets closer to power. He has certainly gone mainstream now, meeting with Condy Rice, Joe Lieberman and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Anyway, he sure knows how to knock reporters off stride, scratching our heads and trying to figure out whether he was really off the record or not. Frankly, I’m still not sure I might not get a visit from the Mossad for putting this material on my blog. If it happens, dear readers, you will be the first to know.

Alive and well

2006-12-17T07:13:00.000-08:00

I'm alive and well, but pulled in seven directions by deadlines. I hope to respond to Boris Gorbis and give delayed account of Lieberman over next 24 hours.

Boris Gorbis: The Bag of Flower Seeds or The Sad Disorder of Moral Blindness

2006-12-13T12:37:00.000-08:00

Here is the latest offering by Boris Gorbis, a leader of the Russian community of Los Angeles, who published here last month his dialogue with an unnamed American Jewish leader. In his new piece, Boris takes me on directly; responding to my recent postings on the Jewish Russian Telegraph and explaining why he thinks I am a nice guy but a victim of the sad disorder of moral blindness. I think Boris is a nice guy too--we spent a fun hour together, but didnt get a chance yet to do some serious vodka drinking, no nadeus skora budit chance ili ve New York, L.A., Tel Avivi, ili mojen byit v'Krimu. For all that, I think Boris has a "sad disorder" also, as do other Russian Jewish siloviki; an overdose of self-righteousness, a tendency to see the world in the starkest black and white terms and a willingness to declare Middle East wars from Los Angeles and Boston that Israeli boys and girls will have to fight. But let me share Boris' piece here and I'll respond at greater length in next 24 hours or so. By the way, I saw Avigdor Lieberman today--a not very informative meeting he had with the Russian media and leadership--and will post a short piece on that later tonight.

THE BAG OF FLOWER SEEDS OR THE SAD DISORDER OF MORAL BLINDNESS

When I came home this evening I had plans other than responding to Walter Ruby’s yet another installment on the issue of Russian Jews and their position on the Arab/Palestinian-Jewish/Israeli conflict. But his piece left me so puzzled that I could not resist and put all things aside.

First, I think Walter, a decent fellow; a skilled and emotional journalist suffers greatly. He knows the Middle East; he is Jewish and he loves Israel. Not the Israel that exists but the one built on romantic biblical notions of the lamb peacefully co-existing with the lion. Since this is a mental construct, an emotional mirage, Walter’s despair is apparent. In our brief encounter this year in Tel Aviv he shared with me his dream - that of a people’s diplomacy where peace is established one on one, peace between men and women of similar or different backgrounds with only one common bond – desire to end hostilities and live in peace, side by side. A peace that gives all children a bomb free lunch time and one that lasts forever.

I barely resisted from telling him what association his narrative brought up. Now is the time.

When I settled in San Francisco in 1975, a leading Russian newspaper there published a front page article under this heading: “The Bold Plan to End the Cold War”. A woman with a White Russian background offered this comprehensive idea: (quoting and condensing from memory) “Cold War is a terrible thing leading to much unnecessary suffering. Russian children are dying in droves from hunger and American farmers overproduce wheat. Russian women are forced to work hard and know no leisure but American women’s spare time is filled with fear of a nuclear attack. It is all a result of the absence of contacts between people. Now, I have a plan. Let every American family buy a bag of flower seeds and send it to a Russian family. When spring comes and flowers begin to bloom the Russian family sitting on a porch would look at the dazzling flower cover and tell its government: “Americans are nice people. We do not need to fight them. Let us make peace”

Unlike the utopian lady with her bag of seeds, Walter Ruby is contagious. His views are shared by many who genuinely profess love of Israel which often hides their disgust and hatred of the way things are there. For some (not for Walter, I hope) this follows the Gorbis’ Law of Hatred which states that: “The intensity of hatred is in direct relationship to the degree of closeness: the closer the identification, the stronger the rejection.” For many, (and I hope not for Walter) it plays out like this: “See those ugly Israelis? I am better! To prove it to myself, I shall spare no one, not even my closest relatives and friends to point out how bad they are, how wrong are their deeds and I shall spare no effort in criticizing and exposing them, for as a Jew I have the right, indeed an obligation, to do so.”

Unlike Walter and his generation of American Jews (and non-Jews) we have seen a large number of these “good Jews” pander to the Party, to the KGB, even to the school officials. Yes, Walter, we, ex-Soviet Jews, “geniuses of JRT” have seen and learned more in our schools than you did. We learned that the desire to be a “good Jew” is not at the expense of being a Jew; it is at the expense of being a moral human.

I know that as a reviewer of Israel, Walter Ruby has a very different view of morality than I do. My morality encompasses three simple principles. First, I believe that it is amoral to think of others before you attend to the needs of those closest to you. Second, I believe that we judge people by what they do, not by what they say. And finally, I believe that not all cultures and their moralities are created equal. The culture of cannibals in Tasmania may be a fascinating study (some tribes only eat strangers and some only eat their own) but it is a repugnant culture and I could easily call it evil. As a Westerner, Walter Ruby, is a relativist, an intended carrier of the ideas of “multiculturalism” an ideology that pronounces all cultures, all morals, and all national aspirations equally valid and thus equally moral.

I abhor this nonsense. I believe in the existence of “good” and “bad”. In fact, I believe in the existence of educated and loquacious people who cannot accept the “evil” among strangers but could easily identify it among their own. In my world view, it is amoral not to demand the victory of a superior morality over the evil one. I have thus the right, indeed an obligation, to claim that Israel’s moral right to exist is superior to that of the Arab world’s moral duty to extinguish Jewish presence in the Middle East (for starters). Therefore, I conclude that it is moral to use every means at our disposal to assure that the Jewish good triumphs and the evil is defeated.

Let me make it clear. I do not compare the death tolls or the sufferings on both sides. To me, they are different for they come from different causes. I do not wish the death and destruction of buildings but to me a destruction of an ancestral Arab home that nurtured a suicide murderer is acceptable and moral whereas the Katyusha rocket hit of an apartment building in Israel is not. This is the initial asymmetry that caused Walter Ruby to give me an unearned (but now treasured) sobriquet of a self-appointed “chacham”. Walter thought that he was asking me a caustically rhetorical question when he wrote: “Again, I ask Boris what makes him such a great chacham, such an authority on the desires, hopes and morals of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims?” I and most of those who read this must regrettably declare that we are.

We are indeed unwilling experts on Palestinian, Arab and Muslim actions and thus of their hopes, desires and aspirations. We witnessed the mad crowd prying out the body of a Russian Jewish soldier from the Joseph’s tomb and tearing it apart, piece by piece. We saw the ten (and some) odd pieces of bodies of two young Jewish men who missed their turn and wound up disembodies by a crowd in an Arab town some 10 miles from Jerusalem. Have anyone ever seen a Jewish mob tearing up a human? Anyplace? Anywhere? We did not see Jewish kindergartens and schools teaching children how to be martyrs (shahids) to drive the Jews from Palestine. The Arabs have them. We do not have a charter calling for the destruction of a single Arab state, as the Arab world has for the “Zionist entity.” Our invisible world does not order us to either convert or destroy the infidels after they reject conversion thrice. The Muslim world hears and follows these instructions. We do not declare our shrines and sacred cities off-limits to the infidels, but I challenge any non-Muslim to try to enter Mecca or Medina. Our Hasidim do not use explosive laden automobiles to blow up crowds at a market only because it is frequented by the Reform. The Sunnis do it to the Shiites and the Shiites obligingly reciprocate. We do not destroy Arab shrines or for that matter cultural monument of other religions. It is the Koran-thumping Talibs (future Muslim scholars) that blew up the 2,000 year-old colossal Buddhas in Afghanistan.

Jews do not kill European cinematographers for the documentary about Jewish women. The Euro-Arabs do. We do not firebomb buildings or kill nuns in retribution for publishing cartoons of Moses. This belongs to the Muslim realm of aspirations. Our culture does not bestow sainthood on those who blow themselves up in pizzerias or restaurants to kill Arab teens. We do not blow up Arab buses aiming at the early working crowd for maximum effect. Jews do not dig tunnels to smuggle weapons to our Jewish comrades shooting from behind the security of children’s housing in Gaza. We did not see Israeli vehicles painted in UN colors to abduct Arab soldiers. We did not see Israeli college graduates overthrow a wheel-chair bound invalid overboard, nor did we ever commandeer an ocean liner to demand the release of Jewish guerrillas. We are the experts on airline highjackings because we were the victims of Arab morality and remain the targets today.

How easy it is to forget the past and pretend that only the future holds correct answers. How easy it is to argue with Walter Ruby whose criteria of correctness is having an epiphany of “seriously dialoguing” or “considerable amount of interaction with ‘the enemy’. “ Contrary to Walter’s assertion I do not believe that the other side is a “demonic species”. I just cannot help but notice that very often they have behaved like one. Thus our ‘considerable amount of interaction’ is a public record and contrary to another Walter’s admonition, that “no side has a monopoly on truth” we shall hold tight on to the knowledge of what is. When the rest of the world, and my friend Walter Ruby, remembers what it conveniently ignores, it will be the day of peace. Until then we must fight. That is the only hope for our survival. Everything else is flower seeds for the morally blind.

Boris Gorbis

Los Angeles

December 11, 2006

Ha'aretz editorial

2006-12-13T03:25:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who has written in past several days. I will be responding to some of those letters to me in next several days after I get past immediate journalistic deadline. It is gratifying to see this discussion forum catching on. In the meantime, please check out this editorial from today's Ha'aretz. Why am I posting it here? Because it is an important statement from the most eloquent representative of the Israeli peace camp of outrage at the grotesque travesty of Holocaust denial and calls for Israel's destruction coming out of Teheran and a call for all Israelis, Jews and lovers of justice, left and right, to unite against the threat from Iran. Secondly, it is worth considering for all those here who are convinced that the peace camp is weak and will not stand up for Israel's security and basic interests. To believe we have to reach a solution that accords basic justice to the Palestinians does not mean one will not stand up for Israel's honor and security.

my latest posting on the Jewish Russian Telegraph on the situation in Israel

2006-12-08T19:09:00.000-08:00

Please see my latest posting on the Jewish Russian Telegraph, the Boston-based right-wing Russian Jewish blog. I was responding to about seven postings responding to an earlier posting of my own. Check out the whole interchange at www.jrtelegraph.com

I would like to thank everyone who responded to my last posting on JRT and look forward to continuing discussing these issues, both on JRT and rubyjewsday.com. Again, everyone is welcome to come and post on my blog as well.

Let me respond to a few of the points made by my interlocutors. JRT editor Greg Margolin, who I enjoyed interviewing together with Alex Koifman when I did a story on the controversy between the Boston Jewish establishment and Russian Jewish leaders a couple of years ago, asks why I bring in the concept of silnaya ruka or iron hand, given that he did not mention it in the JRT piece I was critiquing. True, but it seems to me that the whole approach of JRT is silnaya ruka, the premise that Israel can solve all of its problems with the Palestinians, Arabs and whole Muslim world, with brute force and military might. Just hit them hard enough and win more military victories and they will give up and accept permanent Israeli control of the occupied territories and all the settlements Israel wants to build.

The problem is that approach has been tried for 40 years and hasn't worked. That was Arik Sharon's whole approach for decades until he became prime minister and had the ultimate responsibility for Israel's destiny and then got a sudden jolt of cowardice or insanity or whatever Greg wants to call it and became a lefty/softy. Same with Olmert who was also a lifelong Likudnik. Same thing with Bibi when he was actually in power and not on the outside shouting right-wing slogans. And I guarantee that the same thing will happen with Lieberman if he ever comes to power.

So why do you suppose all the heroes of the Israeli right suddenly come down with cowardice or insanity when they reach power? Because they have to deal with the reality that there are less than six million Jews, versus hundreds of millions of Arabs and 1.3 billion Muslims. Because of this reality, plus the fact that the West, including the U.S. will not write off all of its own interests in order to allow Israel to impose its will on the entire Arab-Muslim world, Israel will NEVER be able to follow the JRT approach to the conflict. That was true in 1967 and 1973 and 1982 and 1993 and 2000 and its just as true today.

Sure, Greg, you and I as Diaspora Jews both have a right to criticize Israel's leaders and I've done my share of that too. Nevertheless, as I wrote, its very easy to sit in Boston and suggest smugly that Olmert, like every other Israeli leader who ever existed, must be either a coward or insane because they don't 'get' what is so self-evident to the geniuses of the JRT; that brute force is the answer. But, with due respect, that hardly can be called a serious analysis.

Writing in a simlar vein, Gene calls Olmert and company "criminals", whereas Vladimir from Minneapolis implies that Olmert's approach is "appeasement" and asks me to give one example of a time when appeasement worked. Well, I hardly see Olmert's policies as appeasement; on the contrary, I see him as trying to give the absolute minumum of land for the maximum of peace. I dont think his plan will work, but for the opposite reason you do. I think that ultimately Israel will have to go back very close to the 67 boundaries and share Jerusalem with an independent Palestinian state if it wants to achieve peace.

Vladimir notes mournfully that ultimately all peoples deserve the leaders they elect, even leaders like Olmert and Peretz. That seems to me again a way of saying that he and other JRT participants understand better than Israelis what is good for them. Kol hakavod, Vladimir and Yekhil that you have sons serving in the IDF, but that doesnt make you a better strategist than either of the crazy cowards presently at the top of the Israeli government.

My friend Boris Gorbis again treats us again to his conviction that "the needs, desires and hopes of most of the Jews and Arabs, of Israelis and Palestinians, are not symmetrical. These belong to entirely different planes of reference. Our fundamental moral rights and theirs moral do not intersect." Again, I ask Boris, what makes him such a great chacham, such an authority, on the desires, hopes and morals of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims? I doubt whether Boris has ever seriously dialogued with any of the above. My own sense, based on a considerable amount of interaction with 'the enemy' is that Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians are all human beings and as human beings have many of the same desires and hopes, for peace, security, success and prosperity. But Boris is convinced the other side are another species entirely--a demonic one.

Finally, my friend Alex Koifman, offers me the following advise: "If you want to understand our community - just sit & listen. Like a student in elementary school." Well, Alex, I have sat and listened and I am still listening and learning, buit also respectfully exchanging ideas with members of the Russian Jewish community as well. As I said, I love and respect Russian Jews, and have since I first began interacting with them back in 1980, but I dont think they have a monopoly on all the wisdom in the world. I would suggest that just as both American Jews and sabras have plenty to learn from Russian Jews--and both have often behaved in an unforgivably patronizing, condescending way toward Russian Jews-that Russian Jews also have plenty to learn from American Jews and sabras as well. No side has a monopoly on the truth, but each side has some pieces of it.

Russian Jews have enriched my life in many wonderful ways, and I understand how the historical experience of Russian Jews shaped the sglad, the mindset, many express here on the JRT (I have known Russian Jewish peaceniks as well, but acknowledge there is a pronounced tendency toward hakishness). But it is exactly because I like and respect this community so much that I reach out and say, 'I think that sglad as it relates to Israel and the Palestinians is a dead end that, if followed, will only dig Israelis, including one million Russian Jews in Israel, deeper into endless conflict.

Anyway, thanks for the chance to dialogue with you and and let us pray together for the peace of Jerusalem.

Walter

On Bloomy and the Islamic Center of Long Island

2006-12-05T13:11:00.000-08:00

More thoughts on Mayor Bloomberg and on a wonderful evening I spent last weekend at the annual dinner of the Islamic Center of Long IslandAn anonymous person responded to my posting on Mike Bloomberg asking how I could say, "I'm not a Bloomy fan." Well, I agree he has done a better than expected job, he's proven very compentent, though I dont see a lot of compassion on his part for those who aren't sharing in prosperity, for those who cant afford their rent and could end up in the streets. I specifically begrudge him the heavy handed police tactics he employed during a major anti-war march in February 2003 just before the beginning of the Iraq war (the police forced a crowd of 100,000 or more onto sidewalks, waded through the crowd with horses in a way that could have caused panic and stampeding and prevented most of the marchers, including myself, from reaching the destination and hear the speeches despite having given authorization), his mass arrests of protesters during the GOP Convention and then holding protestors illegally for up to 72 hours. Those were police state tactics that Bloomy employed to kiss up to and prove his Republican bona-fides to George Bush and I dont forgove and forget so easily when a politician blithely violates citizens' First Amendment rights to petition the government in the public square and puts the lives of thousands at risk with thuggish police tactics.

I went this weekend as a guest to the annual dinner of the Islamic Center of Long Island (ICLI) about which I wrote in the Jewish Week when that institution was attacked as "extremist" by Cong Peter King, despite having been involved in outreach efforts to the Long Island Jewish community for 15 years (they held a joint Ramadan-Succot event this year) and despite having denoounced the 9-11 attacks and terrorism in general. Farouque Khan, a founder and the chairman of the board of ICLI, took part in a highly praised trip to Israel this year together with two rabbis, several Catholic priests and Jewish, Muslim and Catholic high school students. The mosque is overwhelmingly composed of professionals (especially doctors and lawyers), mostly from India and Pakistan. Nassau District attorney Kathleen Rice showed up to praise the mosque and its leaders and members, and to condemn Peter King's attacks, as did King's defeated rival in the recent congressional race, Dave Mejias, as well as did Rabbi Jerome Davidson of Temple Beth-El in Great Neck, and other clergypeople. The leading imam at ICLI told attendees that it is not enought for Muslims to be loyal American citizens; they need to stop thinking in terms of 'them' and 'us' because "We Americans are all in one boat."

Sitting in the audience at the event, and enjoying a wonderful meal and warm hospitality with my gracious and welcoming hosts, I thought about how far they were from the demonic description of Muslims habitually tossed around in the Russian media; in places like the Jewish Russian Telegraph and by a recent guest columnist on this blog, Boris Gorbis of LA, who wrote in part;

"Our individual system of values has at its core two beliefs: One - every life is sacred and two – subject to the rule of law, each person has autonomy over his or her actions. The Muslim world’s system of values is different – it rests on two symmetrically opposite propositions. First, infidels spread spiritual and physical uncleanliness and, second, Koran obligates every faithful Muslim to stop the infidel’s sacral uncleanliness by conversion or annihilation.”

So what am I to make of the dissonance between my own life experience, which has included many wonderful, personally enriching encounters with Muslims, in the U.S. Israel and countries like Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Senegal,and Boris' flat assertion that believing Muslims are all out to destroy us? I wonder again how many personal encounters Boris has had with Muslims and how he came to his conclusion that every faithful Muslim must either try to convert or annihilate non-Muslims (None of the hundreds of Muslims with whom I have had personal encounters in my life have sought to do either). Yes, there is a big problem with Islamic extremism in the world, yes, we all know what happened on 9/11, yes, I worry deeply about Islamic rejectionism vis a vis Israel, but the worst mistake we can make is to tar all Muslims with one brush; to essentially say, there is nothing to say to Muslims, they are our blood enemy y fsyo (thats it). It is so incredibly important to build bridges between the Russian community and moderate Muslims; to stop mutual demonology and help people on both sides to be aware that we are all human beings and have to find a way to live side by side in peace and hopefully, with ever growing personal contact, whether in Midwood, Brooklyn or in Israel.

two yashar koachs--to Bloomy and Olmert

2006-11-28T15:18:00.000-08:00

Another opportunity for some appreciations for a couple of public servants who did the right thing this week...Yashar koach, kol ha kavod, congrats, prosdovlayim to Mayor Mike Bloomberg for reaching out to the family of a young black man, Sean Bell, killed in Jamaica, Queens after plaincloths police officers fired 50 rounds at him and two friends who were severely wounded. The shooting was unprovoked and the men unarmed. Bloomberg also met with a group of black leaders and called the police action "unacceptable." What a welcome change from the tough guy, unfeeling and deeply insensitive response of Rudy Guiliani to the shooting of Amadou Diallo and the torture of Abner Louima back in 'Guiliani time'. In those days, African-Americans felt abandoned by a hostile City Hall ready to accept a few black deaths in exchange for a lowered crime rate. I am not a huge Bloomy fan, but this makes me proud to have a Jewish mayor who acts like a mensch and makes all the people of the city feel cared for and protected.

Yashar koach too to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for his agreeing to a cease-fire with the Palestinians, pulling Israeli troops out of Gaza and proposing new negotiations with President Mahmoud Abbas based on land for peace. This wasn't an easy move for Ehud given the ascendancy of hard liners in Israel these days; given continued Qassam fire at Sderot; and given Hamas still in power and no return of POW Shalit. The most important and welome development in this initiative is that Olmert has abandoned the ill-starred unilateral approach and has come back to the understanding that negotiations with the Palestinians are the only way to go. In making this move despite the political risks, Olmert shows he understands reality; the hard-right perscription offers Israelis nothing more than endless bloodshed; the only way out is searching for a political accomodation. I have lots of criticisms of Olmert's performance, but for today at least, my kippah is off to him.

Kagan Wows Em at Manhattan Beach Jewish Center

2006-11-28T14:47:00.000-08:00

Well, I’m back on my feet and back to this blog. Sorry for disappearing for a week. Here, at last is my coverage of an event from two weeks ago; Ari Kagan being honored at the Manhattan Beach Jewish CenterIf the leaders of the Russian establishment that coalesed this year to narrowly elect Alec Brook-Krasny to the State Legislature thinks that bete noire Ari Kagan is dead and buried politically, they may have another thing coming. Clearly, important elements of South Brooklyn seem to think Kagan has a future. A few weeks ago there was the dedication of the Minsk ghetto stone at Holocaust Memorial Park at which Ari Kagan was one of the key speakers and Brook-Krasny was in the crowd--acknowledged by Kagan and the other speakers, but not invited to speak himself. (Also snubbed in similar fashion was Holocaust Memorial Council director Pauline Bilus, whom many Russians, including Holocaust survivors, believe charges too much for financially-pressed Russians who want to put up a stone for their loved ones who perished in the Holocaust, but that is another story).

Then last week, Ari Kagan was one of three honorees at the 84th Anniversary dinner of the Manhattan Beach Jewish Center, an old institution in the neighborhood which has understood it needs to aggressively reach out to the Russian community to ensure its survival. The shul, which is modern Orthodox, but seemingly with a tolerant atmosphere, now has a Russian-speaking assistant rabbi, Daniel Finkelman and one of the most prominent members of the shul is Alec Teytel, vice president at a branch of HSBC Bank on Kings Highway.

According to synagogue president Rubin Margules, the shul decided to honor Kagan for his journalistic advocacy for increased social services in the area he entered into his bitter election struggle against Brook-Krasny but saw no reason to reconsider giving the honor during the election struggle. “We have nothing against Brook-Krasny but see our event as a way to stimulate Kagan. He has been a good advocate for the Russian and American community as well.” To be sure, the shul is just outside Brook-Krasny’s district, so would not be liable for direct retribution, but still it seems unlikely B-K and his command appreciated what Margulis and the MBJC were up to that night.

For his part, Teytel, who backed Kagan during the campaign, said from the podium that Ari Kagan ran a great campaign against the Democratic machine. He won the Russian vote and came within 100 votes of winning the whole election (within 140 votes, actually, but close enough). He achieved a moral victory by not being a puppet of the machine.”

Even more gratifying for Kagan, fast rising Cong. Anthony Weiner stopped by briefly took the podium and congratulated him on his service to the community and running an impressive campaign. When Kagan made a politically astute impromptu remark in response to Weiner’s words (unfortunately my tape recorder chose to die at that moment so can't give the exact words), Weiner shook his and said in his best Shumeresque Brooklyn schmaltzy style; “Hey, he’s good. He’s good.” The impression left is that Weiner, one of the brightest political lights in the NYC firmament, quite possibly the next mayor of this fair city, sees Kagan as a comer despite his narrow loss. And that’s pretty interesting, given that Nadler, Kruger, Recchia, Nelson, Savino and the Democratic machine went so strongly for B-K. Clearly, Weiner sees it to his advantage to have lines out to both factions in the Russian community.

Down with the Flu

2006-11-24T12:47:00.000-08:00

which is why I havent yet finished the Ari Kagan piece, but thanks to Alec Teytel for reminding me the event in question took place at the Manhattan Beach Jewish Center instead of Sheepshead Bay Jewish Center as I mistakenly wrote. Anyway, kind readers, please bear with me a few days while I get back on my feet. Plenty more good stuff coming up.

Kazakh delegation visits Bukharian community

2006-11-22T13:15:00.000-08:00

Here are my thoughts on two events I covered last week, the visit of a high level delegation from Kazkahstan to the Bukharian Jewish community (this posting) and Ari Kagan being honored at Manhattan Beach Jewish Center (next one). Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving!When a delegation headed by the two top officials from the Kazakhstan Assembly of Nations toured the Bukharian community in Queens last week, the obvious news peg was the Borat movie and I went with gthat theme in order to get the piece published in the Jewish Week. Here is the link to the Jewish Week piece,

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13307

which also included glowing statements from the co-chairman of the Assembly of Nations, Zhumatai Aliyev and Sergei Diachenko who said--Borat to the contrary--that Kazakhstan is a wonderful place for Jews to live and do business, and that the richest man in Kazakhstan, Alexander Mashkevich, head of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, is a Jew, etc. etc. What got cut from the article by editors who as always were intent on saving space was a serious discussion on the close ties being cultivated between the Bukharian community and the Kazakh government. Both Aliyev and Diachenko and the country's ambassador and deputy ambassador to the U.N. Yerzhan Kazykhanov and Barlybay Sadykov spoke proudly of the close relationship between Kazakh president Nursultan Nazerbayev and Israeli-Bukharian billionaire Lev Leviev, who owns a gold mine there and got special dispensation from Nazerbayev to open Jewish schools in the country despite a law forbidding religious schools.

Sadykov noted that a number of Bukharian Jewish leaders have visited Kazakhstan and written and spoken glowingly about the place, including Rafael Nektalov, editor of the weekly Bukharian Times, who seved as an election monitor of last December's election, in which Nazerbayev got 90 percent of the vote in an election that Human Rights Watch said was full of abuses by the government of opposition groups. Nektalov and other Bukharian leaders previously defended Uzbek President/dictator Islam Karimov even after his forces fired on demonstrators in 2004 killing several hundred and even the Bush Administration protested strongly-which led Karimov to kick US forces out of the country. Seeing Karimov's isolation from the West the Bukharian leaders seem to have now moved toward embracing Nazerbayev instead--he has a somewhat better odor than Karimov and besides, billions of dollars from the West are flowing i nto Kazakhstan for oil, natural gas and a panoply of minerals, rather than to Uzbekistan, the homeland of the Bukharians. Indeed, a number of Bukharian Jews have moved to Kazakhstan in recent years because of business opportunities and because the place is safer and less effected by islamic fundamentalism (at least so far).

Sadykov told me that the Kazakh government is interested to preserve and develop our close ties with the Bukharian community, "Because we believe that cultural and economic interaction will benefit both sides.” Sadykov said that while Bukharian Jews are not directly involved in lobbying on behalf of Kazakhstan in Washington, “Those Bukharian Jews who have visited Kazakhstan have reflected (in the media) on what they have seen in our country.”

The visit of the Kazakh delegation to the Queens Gymnasia and the Bukharian Museum was a warm and fuzzy event, and then everyone went to a wonderful midday banquet at the Bukharian Cultural Center at tables groaning with wonderful food and drink in which, I should readily admit, this reporter participated with gusto, even taking the micropphone at one point to make some sentimental comments recalling my first vist with Rafik Nektalov in Samarkand back in 1990. I love Bukharian food culture and dance and like Rafik and many of the other community leaders (mazel tov, by the way, to Aron Aronov for realizing his longstanding dream of opening his magnificent Bukharian Museum, which will preserve for future generations the story of the now nearly finished saga of Bukharian Jewish life in Central Asia).

Nevertheless, I would be remiss if I didnt use this blog to raise the question of why the Bukharian Jews are so anxious to build strategic ties with Central Asian strongmen like Karimov and Nazerbayev and dismiss as irrelevant concerns about the human rights situations in those countries. To be sure, its probably too much ask the Bukharian Jews to be more fastidious about abuses of democracy in Kazakhstan than the Bush Administration, which is happy to woo Nazerbayev despite what Human Rights Watch characterizes as sustained persecution, violations of freedom of expression and freedom of the media, and harassment of non-governmental organizations. harrassment of the non-governmental organizations. But dont our Jewish values raise basic moral questions about embracing authoritarian regimes? And, morals aside, there is also a very pragmatic question--if the emigre Jewish community is so totally identified with dictators, what happens to the Jews left there if and when those strongmen fall?

Its really the same issue we see concerning the ongoing struggle within the larger Russian Jewish community in New York about ties with the Putin regime. Isn't there something troubling about declaring oneself a 'Russian compatriot' under the aegis of an increasingly dictatorial regime which appears to sanction the elimination with extreme prejudice of political opponents like martyred journalist Anna Politskaya and this former FSB guy who just got poisoned? Are we to climb in bed with a bunch of ruthless KGB thugs who are terrifying Russians into obedience?

Let us never forget that Russian and Bukharian Jews came to America seeking democracy and freedom of conscience. Having achieved that freedom, should Jews from the FSU living in America now embrace the new generation of oppressors who succeeded the Soviet ones and deny freedom to those who remain behind in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other states of the FSU? I am ready to grant that there are serious and valid reasons for building such ties, but there are important moral concerns that need to be vetted on an ongoing basis in the Russian community here and should not be swept under the rug amidst the concluding of multi-million dollar business deals and chummy vodka and cognac toasts

response to Boris Gorbis from Sajjad

2006-11-20T14:20:00.000-08:00

Here is a response to Boris Gorbis' article from Sajjad, presumably a Muslim reader of rubyjewsday. Is there anyone out there with knowledge of Islam who would want to dispute anything Sajjad writes here?The simplicity of Mr. Gorbis comments regarding the worldview of Muslims belies an unfortunate ignorance that is pervasive in the minds of many. This ignorance is guided by political views and agendas rather than a sound knowledge of scriptural sources.

In Islam too all life on earth is seen as sacred. In the Qur'an (the sacred book of Muslims) we read that taking the life of one person is as if all of humanity has been killed while saving a life is as if all of humanity was saved. God himself says that he has made every life sacred in Chapter 17 of the Qur'an. In regards to the personal autonomy and responsibility each person has for his/her own actions Muslims believe that no soul can bear the burden of another.

On the issue of spiritual and physical uncleanliness it would be interesting to find the sources Mr. Gorbis found this information from. From a theological standpoint - nowhere in the Qur'an do we read anything whatsoever about any form of uncleanliness for Non-Muslims. In fact Muslims are taught to live with people of all faiths and creeds in peace and harmony. Nor are Muslims taught to forcibly convert or annihilate anyone. The latter can be drawn from the verses that speak to each life being sacred. The former issue of conversion is amply proven in the verse of the Qur'an which simply says "There shall be no compulsion in religion." Every human being is free to believe as he/she chooses.

In fact, it would be useful in this particular case to keep in mind that the Qur'an mentions the Prophet Moses (peace be upon him) more times than it mentions the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). The spiritual pedigree of the Children of Israel is the topic of discussion in a large portion of the Qur'an as the tests/successes/trials of the Children of Israel are discussed. Muslims revere the Prophets Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Solomon, Moses, and so many others (peace be upon them all). With this kind of honor and respect given to them how can Muslims see Jews as unclean in any form?

Walter Ruby's response to Boris Gorbis

2006-11-15T19:29:00.000-08:00

Dear Boris:
Well, you were certainly on the cutting edge with this piece; ever since you sent it to me a week ago, the issue of whither US-Israel relations in the wake of the Democratic takeover has been all over the New York Times, Washington Post and elsewhere, it has become one of the principle issues of the moment, as the chattering class (I hate that term but I’m using it anyway) sifts through the rubble of the political earthquake that shook Washington last week. Let me try to address a few of the points you raised in your jousting with your unnamed American Jewish interlocutor.
Boris asked: "Is there a danger the newly resurgent Democrats will abandon Israel?"

The question is not quite, as your interlocutor says, “a silly provocation” but it comes close. The Democratic Party is the Jewish party in America, it has been since the time of Roosevelt, Harry Truman recognized the State of Israel an hour after it was created and 87 percent of Jews voted Democratic in 2006. Democratic members of Congress are just as reflexively pro-Israel as are Republicans, of not more so; virtually all of them take pro-Israel money. With due respect, your idea that “60’s radicals” will now rule the roost in the Democratic Party” is nonsense; while the people in charge of the party may have been impacted by the 60’s, as I certainly and very proudly was, that was 40 years ago and we’ve all moderated a whole lot since. More to the point, Democrats and 60’s people are hardly more partial to Islamic fundamentalism as a philosophy than are hard-line Republicans. After all Islamic fundamentalism is an attack on liberal Western values, not on conservative ones; George Bush, with his anti-abortion, keep women chained to child-rearing, anti-evolution fundamentalist Christian mentality is, in many ways on the same mental wavelength as the ayatollahs. We moral relativist libs don’t buy the Bush-Cheney-Pat Robertson line that this is a war to the death between cosmic good and cosmic evil; we don’t do the ‘good against evil’ thing. Rather, we prefer to seduce mainstream Muslims away from the fundies with promises of sharing in prosperity, free speech and free thinking. Hey it worked with the Soviets… In any case, don’t expect Nancy Pelosi, Hillary, Obama or Barney Frank (especially Barney) to be crawling into bed with the Ahmedinijad anytime soon.

Having said that, Boris, you are on to something by pointing out that in the new political configuration, Israel does not have a blank check to move in a radical right direction—nor should it. 20 years ago, American observers of the Israeli-Arab conflict used to say that U.S. support for Israel was solid as long as Meir Kahane didn’t come to power and carry out the policies he advocated in his speeches and writings; putting all the Arabs on trucks and driving them across the border and creating an anti-democratic, authoritarian halachic state where the penalty for a Jew having sexual relations with a non-Jew would be 39 lashes. I don’t think the characterization of Lieberman as “extreme right” is fair or accurate; I believe he will turn out to be quite pragmatic and to call him a fascist is a short-sighted move that will only further needlessly alienate Russian voters from the liberal side of the ledger, when we can be natural allies on social benefits and civil marriage (to get my full thinking on Lieberman, check out my recent op-ed on “Russians and the Jewish Left” in the previous posts column). Yet the reality is that if Israel took an extreme turn toward radicalism and authoritarianism in its treatment of the Palestinians, of course there would be a price to pay. Israel is already paying a steep price in having alienated much of enlightened world opinion—certainly European opinion--by its insistence on occupying the Palestinians for 40 years and settling the West Bank out from under them. If they keep it up or make it worse, that erosion will accelerate and increasingly affect U.S. public opinion as well. So Israel spits at U.S. and European opinion at its peril. Lieberman’s macho muscle flexing to the contrary, Israel is not strong enough to stand alone against one point whatever billion Muslims.

It should be clear that the Israeli-Arab conflict cannot be separated from the larger crisis roiling the Islamic world. To the extent that Israel undertakes policies that further inflame the region and further radicalizes young Muslims from Marrakech to Malacca, it will negatively impact U.S. interests, and broader Western interests. The inverse, of course, is true as well; the radical U.S. policy of recent years exemplified by the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has negatively impacted Israeli interests. Is Israel safer today because the U.S. invaded Iraq, creating a jihadist wave throughout the region and an emboldened Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, who have figured out that a U.S. bogged down in Iraq2 is no threat to them? The recent Lebanon war should put paid to the conceit that a U.S. led ‘War of Civilizations’ is good for Israel and the Jews.

Finally, perpetual grinding war with the Palestinians, as we have seen it played out over the past year or so along the Gaza border is not good for Israel. It does not make Israelis safer, nor does it bring closer the day when Israel becomes the safe “normal” and “fun” country that Olmert and most Israelis, including Russians, would like to see. So in that context, a U.S. policy like the one Clinton pushed, which endeavors mightily to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and presses both sides to make concessions in the interest of a lasting peace is better for Israel than a Bush policy that allows Israelis to dig in their heels and dig themselves deeper into a hopeless and useless occupation of the West Bank that will only get more Israelis killed in the end.

So does Israel have a blank check to be as hard-assed and violent as the Israeli right might want to be vis a vis the Palestinians? No, it does not and thank God for that. Whether or not Lieberman may purport to believe otherwise, the silnaya ruka approach is not good for Israel and will not work. A succession of Israeli leaders since 1967 have tried variations of the above and have only succeeded in eliciting ever-increasing hatred and violence from the Palestinians. Israel needs to end its occupation of the maximum number of Palestinians to the greatest degree possible in exchange for the maximum amount of peace and security. To accomplish that, it needs American help; the kind of help that only an American Administration dedicated to ameliorating the War Between Civilizations, not inflaming it, can provide.

What about Boris Gorbis’ 10 point nightmare scenario for the destruction of Israel—Isn’t it a possibility?

Sure it is and the military planners in the Kiriya in Tel Aviv and in the Pentagon should be doing some serious contingency planning. But with all due respect, it feels a bit overwrought. Even if, God forbid, Ahmedinijad gets the bomb, he isn’t going to attack Tel Aviv with his one puny bomb because he doesn’t want Teheran or the holy city of Qum to be on the receiving end of Israel’s 200 bomb nuclear arsenal. During the Cold War, we and the Soviets had this game called Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that prevented either side from unleashing the nukes. A similar scenario will obtain here. The mullahs enjoy wielding power and keeping women in chadors, but to keep doing that, they have to stay alive.

Boris wrote: “Oh no, that is an issue of national priorities; not an individual choice. Our individual system of values has at its core two beliefs: One - every life is sacred and two – subject to the rule of law, each person has autonomy over his or her actions. The Muslim world’s system of values is different – it rests on two symmetrically opposite propositions. First, infidels spread spiritual and physical uncleanliness and, second, Koran obligates every faithful Muslim to stop the infidel’s sacral uncleanliness by conversion or annihilation.”

Boris, no offense, and I could be wrong, but I doubt you’ve met and dialogued with a Muslim in your life. Very few Russian or American Jews have either. So what makes you righties such authorities on the Muslim world’s system of values? Because Steven Emerson told you so? I’ve spent a fair amount of time communicating and dialoguing with Palestinians—mainly Muslims—and not one has ever expressed any issue about my spiritual and or physical uncleanliness, even when they invited me to eat in their homes and not one ever tried to convert or annihilate me. Instead they greeted me as an honored guest and we have moving dialogue and we enjoyed hanging out together.
Earth to Gorbis, Muslims are neither devils nor angels, but are human beings, just like we are. They are not some alien species. Yes, Islamic extremism is a danger, but the way to fight it is to reach out to Muslim moderates as fellow human beings, to treat them with respect and even affection, if warranted. And kol ha kavod to the Minneapolis Jewish World newspaper for endorsing Keith Ellison and rejecting his race-baiting opponent Alan Fine. It is better to have a Muslim in Congress showing young Muslims by example that they have a stake in the system than giving them the message that they are all considered enemies by the country they live in, so they might as well go ahead and start making bombs…

Boris concluded:
He was looking at me from above and said: “We have no fear of inflicting harm on those who threaten us directly but are you saying that we shall hesitate to do so if Israel is attacked?” “That is exactly my point. Now you got it! But it would be the Russian Jews in America who will come forward and…” My voice trailed. We looked at each other as if this were a joke and laughed.

Boris, with due respect, how the hell are the Russian Jews in America going to come forward when the time comes? Will all the hard-ass Russian Jews in their 50’s, 60’s and 70’s come forward to volunteer for Tzahal? Russian Jews in America wont come forward any more other American Jews have come forward in past Israeli wars. Instead, they give millions of dollars in emergency fund raising drives and press our government to support Israel. They will do it again, this time with the backing of RAJI as well as AIPAC. Nu, so you think you invented the wheel in terms of pro-Israel advocacy? Meanwhile, Israelis, including Russian born Israelis, will fight and die. Kacha zeh. That’s how it’s always been and will keep on being, unless we all figure out a way to make peace and end the endless cycle of killing and dying. Boris, I don’t see any indication that you have the answer for that one.

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2006-11-14T10:03:00.000-08:00

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In New Middle East, Tests For An Old Friendship

2006-11-13T02:56:00.000-08:00

A first rate analysis piece by Steven Erlanger from the New York Times, mulling over the same issues in Boris Gorbis' piece, namely wither the US-Israel relationship and the ongoing Iran conundrum in the wake of the Democrats' takeover of Congress. I'll have my own say on these issues tomorrow.