JustASC

Respected Israeli think-tanker Yossi Alpher describes what ails Israel: “a right-religious-settler-Russian coalition pushing a reactionary agenda.” Its leaders are targeting civil-society NGOs, its followers are disproportionately represented in the ranks of the military, and “its policies encourage or ignore growing anti-Arab incitement in Israel.”

Writes Alpher:

The Obama administration’s problems with Israel go beyond the construction of another few hundred housing units in East Jerusalem. More ominously, the ruling coalition in Israel reflects a reshaping of Israeli society that has fortified right-wing designs on the West Bank and strengthened resistance to a peace agreement.

He doesn’t discuss how this will eventually affect relations between Israel and American Jews. An extremely vocal and active minority are all for this sort of makeover, but the majority of American Jews are bound to be discomfited by an Israel that less and less reflects their essentially liberal democratic values.

While the Right is bound to celebrate this, they ought to give some thought as to what it will mean if support for Israel becomes a minority Jewish undertaking.

For Earth Day, ten meaningless Jewish gestures to protect the environment:

1/ Cut Shabbat candles in half – burn less wax and thereby help address world wax shortage

2/ Don’t drive to synagogue. Don’t walk either. Stay home and recycle something.

3/ Share favorite Torah passages about conservation – in Hebrew, with your Korean dry cleaner

4/ Hold an “Earth Day” seder, but don’t invite anybody. In fact, don’t hold the seder either.

5/ Tell the kids to clean the house and make dinner. Explain that Jews celebrate “Earth Day” as a day of rest for the parents. If they ask where you got that idea, tell them to look it up themselves, you’re resting.

6/ Buy fair trade coffee using old baseball cards, marbles and a shark’s tooth. If the cashier balks, just keep yelling, “Fair trade, fair trade!”

7/ Dress up as your favorite Jewish environmentalist, but not Dr. Eilon Schwartz, director of the Heschel Center for the Environment in Tel Aviv. Everyone goes as Dr. Eilon Schwartz.

8/ Dedicate your morning prayers to saving the environment. That should do the trick.

9/ Make one small change in how you consume energy, liking riding your bicycle to work, or driving your car aimlessly in lieu of exercise.

10/ In your Facebook status, link to some Israeli innovations in conservation and renewable energy and explain how Israel would trade them all in for even a single successful oil well.

My daugher, born in Jerusalem and back there on a school trip, writes:

It was so nice to come back to the land of my birth after so many years. Even though I don’t have any memories of living in Israel, I felt a deep connection to the Jewish State.

It’s weird what Google Alerts coughs up: Here’s a piece I wrote 10 years ago critiquing advertisements by Jewish institutions.

While I’m suddenly on the topic, Caplansky’s deli in Toronto has a cute series of ads playing with new and traditional themes. See samples here.

Jeff Yoskowitz, who has written for NJJN in the past, writes about the new “Traif” retaurant in Brooklyn and interviews its chef, Jason Marcus, for the Atlantic site:

Jason Marcus’s connection to the forbidden is far different from some of his ex-Orthodox patrons: a nice Jewish boy from Randolph, New Jersey, he was bar mitzvahed at a reform [sic] synagogue. However, his connection still runs deep. “Do you have to call it Traif?” his mother, who grew up in a family that mostly kept kosher inside the house and let the rules slide outside, asked of her son.

 Yes, he did. “It represents who I am, [and] I’m proud of who I am,” Marcus says.

Which reminds me of the old joke:

A Jew converts and becomes a priest. He gives his first mass in front of a number of high ranking priests who came for the occasion.

At the end of the new priest’s sermon a cardinal goes to congratulate him.

“That was very well done,” says the cardinal, “you were just perfect.

“But next time please don’t start your sermon with, ‘Fellow goyim…’”

You gotta love the enterprise of Israelis: My daughter is in Israel this week with her eighth-grade Schechter day school class. Here’s a sign that greeted them at a gift shop, presumably in Jerusalem:

Yesterday the head of the South African Zionist Federation denied reports that Judge Goldstone had been “banned” from his grandson’s bar mitzva in Johannesburg. Avram Krengel also said his group and the synagogue agreed to withhold comment on their “negotiations”; as he explains to the Jerusalem Post today:

“We agreed not to talk about our disagreements because we are sensitive to the family and the issues they have to deal with,” Krengel said.

So what does this enormously “sensitive” man have in store for the family?

The head of the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) said it still planned to protest Judge Richard Goldstone’s presence at his grandson’s barmitzvah two weeks from now – if he changed his mind and decided to go.

Last week, it was reported that, following negotiations between Goldstone’s family and the Beit Hamedrash Hagadol synagogue in Sandton, it had been decided that one of the world’s pre-eminent jurists and human rights lawyers would not attend the ceremony following threats of protest by the SAZF.

The SAZF’s chairman, Avrom Krengel, said Goldstone had “definitely not” been barred, but he would also not be receiving a welcome reception if he chose to make it to the barmitzvah.

“We’ll exercise our constitutional right to protest,” Krengel said.

Because nothing says “sensitivity” like heckling Jews on their way to services.

NJ’s first Hebrew-language charter school announces the hiring of a principal. From the press release:

Taking an important step toward its opening in September, Hatikvah International Academy Charter School announced today the hiring of Colin Hogan, an experienced, award-winning educator with a strong background in public schools, charter schools, private schools and Hebrew learning, as its founding principal. Hogan will assume the position officially in July but is already working hard to finalize the curriculum and hire teachers.

Hogan has taught at the Academy of Communications and Technology Charter School in Chicago, the Princeton Charter School, Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School, and at the Highland Park Middle School, where his passion for education and his redesign of the sixth grade social studies curriculum earned him the Teacher of the Year award in 2007.

Hogan has also studied and taught in Israel. He spent his junior year of college studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and following graduation he participated in the year-long Otzma volunteer program, which provided him with opportunities to work and teach in schools and social service agencies throughout Israel. Upon his return to the U.S., Hogan worked for several years as a recruiter for Hebrew University in New York City.

NJ developer Charles Kushner, who has been relatively quiet (certainly locally) on the Jewish philanthropic front since his legal problems began, offers JTA his “two-tranche” solution for funding Jewish education (a tranche is financial-speak for “installment”).

The bottom line: schools should invest in life insurance policies for their parents and benefactors. He explains:

Tranche I: Upon enrollment of its first child to enter yeshiva, each family agrees to allow the school to buy a $25,000 life insurance policy on each parent. There is only ONE policy per parent at the school, regardless of how many children attend the school. The premiums are to be paid over a period of 10 years and remain in effect until the insured reaches 100 years of age. Again, the premiums are paid at no cost to the parents.

Tranche II: Ten benefactors to the school will each select an older person to honor by buying a life insurance policy in his or her name. The death benefit will be $5 million, again with premiums to be paid over a period of 10 years and guaranteed until the insured reaches 100 years of age.

Kushner acknowledges the challenge and drawbacks: finding a donor/s willing to buy the $5 million policy to honor a loved one, and another who will commit to buying $25,000 policies on each parent at the school. Plus, he talks about a big payout – by 2065. Schools tend to want to identify big givers to help them get throught the present and near-future — not wait 55 years.

He also doesn’t mention the delicate issue that much of the plan’s success seems to be based on the mortality of parents and grandparents. Sure, death is inevitable, but I think a fund-raising strategy based on it may be a hard sell for an elementary school. (“Ways to help our school: Buy a journal ad. Hold a bake sale. Die young.”) 

Colleges have been looking at similar ideas in recent years — and experts have thrown out a bunch of caveats, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. From the abstract:

As long as they own the plans themselves, the colleges believe they will receive the full benefits when their donors die. But some insurance experts worry that agents’ commissions, investment uncertainties, and longer life spans could cut into the money colleges ultimately receive from policies. State insurance commissioners who have heard about colleges’ growing interest in the arrangements warn them to proceed with caution before establishing plans.

And earlier this year, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on a lawsuit between a college that pioneered such a plan and the insurance company that offered it:

Lawsuit Suggests Oklahoma State’s Insurance-Based Fund-Raising Plan Was Too Good to Be True

Oklahoma State University is suing a life-insurance company that promised to raise hundreds of millions for the university’s athletics programs through life-insurance policies on about 27 leading donors.

In the lawsuit, filed in the District Court of Payne County, Okla., university officials allege that the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company and John Ridings Lee, a Texas-based agent for the company, predicted they could raise $350-million in 20 to 25 years and charged the university inflated premiums.

On Saturday, the NY Times gave front-page coverage to the Goldstone bar mitzva controversy, and like me was curious about the vague sourcing of the original report in South Africa :

The source of those threats carries an air of mystery. The story was first reported in the South African Jewish Report. No one quoted in the article took responsibility for the threats or reliably pointed a finger elsewhere.

That’s left room for some deniability. The Jerusalem Post reports:

The South African Zionist Federation over the weekend denied reports that former Constitutional Court judge Richard Goldstone, who chaired a UN report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza, was told not to attend his grandson’s bar mitzva in Johannesburg next month, according to a report in South African daily The Star.

“Contrary to distorted media reports and false blog accusations, the SAZF states unequivocally that at no time was there any suggestion raised by any party that judge Goldstone should be ‘barred’ or ‘banned’ from entering the synagogue,” SAZF chairman Avrom Krengel was quoted by the paper as saying.

“The SAZF wishes to clarify that discussions were held with the Sandton Synagogue regarding the forthcoming bar mitzva of the grandson of judge Richard Goldstone, and agreement was reached between the parties that no comments would be made until after the celebration.”

Doens’t clear up much, does it? You still have the unhelpful passive voice (“discussions were held”) but no hint at the substance of the agreement. Nature and the blogosphere abhor a vaccum, so if the SAZF is upset that their agreement was misreported, it’s their own fault for not explaining what it was in the first place.