Thursday, January 14, 2010
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Bulgarian beats Egyptian anti-Semite for UNESCO post
The victor, Irina Bokova, 57, won by a vote of 31 to 27 to be the new director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Her opponent, Culture Minister Farouk Hosny, 71, had been considered the favorite to win.
A race that began with nine candidates, with Mr. Hosny in the lead, was affected by charges that he was in favor of burning books by Israelis and keeping restrictions on Egypt’s carefully edited press — incompatible with a United Nations agency that is supposed to defend press freedom.
An alliance of Unesco board members opposed to Mr. Hosny finally coalesced around Ms. Bokova, a former Bulgarian foreign minister and currently Bulgaria’s ambassador to France and Unesco, which is headquartered in Paris.
Unesco has never been run by someone from the Arab world or Eastern Europe. The new director general replaces Koichiro Matsuura of Japan.
Source
Osama Bin Laden Endorses Jimmy Carter
Source
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Torah that survived Holocaust finds home in Miami
MIAMI — Rabbi Danny Marmorstein uses the Yiddish word "bashert" to describe how a Torah created in 19th-century Eastern Europe survived the Nazi regime in near-perfect condition and landed a world away at his tiny synagogue.
"It means 'meant to be,'" he said, "and this was meant for us."
The 131-year-old Torah is being celebrated at Congregation Ahavat Olam for the first time on Rosh Hashanah, offering a powerful symbol on the endurance of the Jewish faith.
The sheepskin scroll was believed to have been completed in 1878, the date of the inscription on its wooden handle. The handle also bears the name of the couple who donated it to their congregation in Moravske Budejovice, in what is now the Czech Republic.
It was kept in a warehouse with other Torahs and Judaica after Hitler came to power, coming under the Nazis' control. After the Nazis fell, the cache from the Central Jewish Museum in Prague was controlled by communists who eventually sold the scroll and 1,563 others to a London synagogue in 1963.
That repository, the Memorial Scrolls Trust, has given the Torahs to congregations, museums and other groups as symbols of survival of the faith and a connection to all the Jews lost during the Holocaust.
"We've sent them all over the world," said Evelyn Friedlander, the London-based curator of the trust, "and they've come back to life."
The scroll came to Miami after Marmorstein placed the synagogue's name on a waiting list several years back. Like all the trust's scrolls, it remains the property of the London organization, on indefinite loan to the temple. Congregations are chosen, in part, based on their desire to incorporate the scroll into their worship.
At Ahavat Olam, the Torah was welcomed last month with a procession from Marmorstein's house to the Methodist church about a mile away where the 100-member congregation has been renting space for worship. It was to be read for the first time and be the subject of the rabbi's sermon when the congregants celebrate the Jewish new year on Friday.
Already, its history has resonated with members.
Bianca Lerner, 80, survived the Holocaust in part by being taken in by the parents of a Christian friend and then hiding in a Catholic orphanage. She remembers being forced with her parents from their home. Her father was killed in a Polish ghetto. Her mother died at the Treblinka extermination camp.
"My parents just walked out of our apartment, which was beautifully furnished with antiques and Oriental rugs and we just walked out and that was it," she said. "Since then, I've thought material possessions don't mean anything." But a Torah, Lerner said, is different: It's not just the central symbol of her faith, but something used in actual prayer and worship.
Irving Whitman, 88, says he was a young Army private from New Jersey when he helped liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp. Those memories are seared in his mind. And he sees the Torah as an extension of his wartime experience.
"It's all part of the same story," he said. "It's all part of the same historical moment."
Susan Boyer, the U.S. director of the trust, also heads the Czech Torah Network in Sherman Oaks, Calif., which has helped reunite Holocaust survivors with scrolls from their hometowns.
When she thinks of the surviving Torahs, she wonders what happened to the people from its synagogue, the people who prayed with it. It is a sad story, she admits, but she says it is buffered by hope, because the faith has lived on.
If the Nazis had prevailed, Jews would have faded away long before Ahavat Olam gained roots in South Florida five years ago. Hitler's army would have killed the men and women who bore its congregants. And the Torah never would have left SS hands.
Marmorstein knew he wanted a Holocaaust-surviving Torah since the congregation was born. He wanted to pay tribute to the Jews who died and could think of no better way than through the faith's most prized possession.The 54-year-old rabbi shows a black-and-white picture of 11 relatives, his great aunts and uncles, grandfather and great-grandparents. Only two in the photo survived the Holocaust: his father and an uncle who both were liberated from Auschwitz.
When asked why getting the Torah was so important, his eyes well with tears.
"It's in my blood, this whole history is in my family," he said. "It's easy for us to sit and talk about it. But when it was your own father, your own uncle, when your grandfather was killed. That's why."
Source: AP
USA antisemitism - Seattle synagogues defaced with swastikas
Officers said swastikas were found on a synagogue in the 6500 block of 52nd Avenue South and another in the 5100 block of South Morgan Street, both near Seward Park. A swastika also was painted on the driveway of one synagogue.
Swastikas also were painted at seven spots on the sidewalk in front of private homes in the area, said Eli Varon, vice president of the congregation at one of the defaced synagogues.
A police spokesperson said that defacing of property with swastikas is considered malicious harassment. An investigation is under way, and all information is being forwarded to department's bias crimes detective.
The Seattle police is treating the crime "very seriously," the department said in a statement. No suspects have been arrested at this point.
The swastikas are being removed by property owners. Those painted on public property are being removed by the Seattle Department of Transportation.
Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the Seattle Police Department's Bias Crimes Unit at (206) 233-3898.
KOMO KVAL.COM
Monday, September 14, 2009
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on antisemitism
I had the good fortune of being a Jew born in the United States. Our parents, one of whom came from Odessa—an area where the Jews were fearful of pogroms. I might not have been here—I more than likely would not have survived the Holocaust if my mother's family had remained in Austria. So, that's what I mean by my great good fortune to be in the United States, where, I think, more than any other place, despite the existence of antisemitism, Jews can feel free to live their lives as they will, to think as they choose.
And for me, I graduated from high school in 1950. My college years were the heyday of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was looking for Communists in every closet. And I came to see that there were brave people standing up for the most fundamental values of the United States, that is, the right to think and speak freely and without fear that you would be punished for your ideas.
After World War II, many nations came to appreciate that elected representatives can't necessarily be trusted to uphold fundamental human rights. And so, countries began to do what the United States had been doing since the beginning. That is, courts interpreting a higher law. In our case, our Constitution and Bill of Rights. In the case of Europe, the new constitutions—the post-World War II constitutions that have similar guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of religion. And separate tribunals—constitutional courts—began to engage in that business. It's just one more check against the return of an oppressive government.
But, today, there is much cause to be concerned. We can see it right now when the leader of Iran speaks about if there was a Holocaust. If there was one, then why didn't Germany create a special state for the Jews? And there are some people in the United States who are buying that kind of propaganda.
Do I think it should be a crime to deny the Holocaust? That is a very difficult question. What's right for one society is not necessarily right for another. And given the history of what went on in Germany—that this most civilized nation succumbed to the worst inhumanity—it may be that for Germany such a law is appropriate. In the United States, I still believe that the way to fight bad speech is not to ban it, but to fight it with true speech. To use the opportunity to educate people unto the falsehoods that others are speaking, but not to close down the right to speak. That's much too precious.
http://www.ushmm.org
Voices on Antisemitism - Nechama Tec - Professor Emerita of Sociology, UConn
The German nation was a patriarchal system, like most European countries at that time. So this was true also for the Jewish families, you know, that the man was really in charge. So by the patterns of relationships that they had, the demand was much greater upon women to be flexible—they had to be submissive to the father, then to the husband. That doesn't mean that every woman behaves this way under all circumstances. But the women have a history of accommodation and this history of accommodation creates flexibility.
If we take, for instance, the situation in the ghetto. Much of my evidence comes from direct interviews. What happened to the men that were brought into the ghetto? If they survived, they lost their jobs, they lost their status, they became a nobody. Because in a patriarchal system, the whole selfhood for a man comes from his achievements: can he be a protector of the family? Can he be a supporter of the family? And all this was thrown out. They were humiliated, terribly, on purpose. But the woman's domain—to feed the family—was still there. So therefore a woman, while she lost a lot, it did not destroy her selfhood.
What do we want when we start looking at the Holocaust? We want to learn, to get insights. And the more ways you consider when you examine different groups, the better the outcome, I think. Because one story doesn't give you the answer.
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