Can a Jew be an Anti-Zionist?

Better be careful here, Josh. When walking into a minefield things can go KA-BOOM in the night. And in the day. And I enter this particular field because?

So, here’s my question, one that I’ve been thinking about for the past half-century. “To be a Jew, must one be a Zionist?” The key word here is “must” as in “I must breathe to live.” And what is meant by Zionist? Until someone suggests a better response, let this suffice: A Zionist believes, as a minimum, that there is something called “the Jewish people” which combines a unique combination of genetic and historic heritages and has a right to create a state of its own in (here’s the tricky part) the Promised Land/Palestine/ Israel. Now obviously one can be a Zionist and not a Jew. Many Gentiles fall into this category. I wrote a book, “Our Great Solicitor”, about one such man, Josiah Wedgwood, who in the 1930s and ‘40s strongly advocated for the Jews in Parliament. Some Fundamentalist Protestants make a religion of their support for Israel, their motivations though sometimes give us pause.

But let’s stick with the question of Jews. In the beginning of the movement to create a Jewish state, many Orthodox opposed the idea, arguing that only with the coming of the Messiah would it be appropriate. Concurrently, many in the Reform camp were also hostile to the idea most famously in the so-called Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 which declared that they no longer expected Jews to return to a national homeland in Palestine. This was an American version of the still older claim of Jews in Napoleonic France that they were Frenchmen of the Mosaic persuasion, not a separate people. But that was then. With the rise of the Nazis a lot changed.

I consider it a form of blasphemy to argue that God brought on (in a variant that He allowed) the Holocaust so as to advance the ingathering of His people. But while the theory may be obnoxious, the reality is that the Holocaust allowed Jews and Gentiles to re-think their attitudes toward the creation of a Jewish state. Ironically, then, the attempt to destroy the Jews created a climate in which the State of Israel could be born.

As always there are those who cling to old ideas even when they are repudiated by new realities. Such people open up buggy whip factories and then wonder why there are no customers. In America we have the American Council for Judaism, the current president of which, Stephen Naman, was recently profiled in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/us/26religion.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=anti-zionst%20jews&st=cse). Like the Haredim who continue to deny the existence of the Israel upon which at the same time they try to impose their values, Naman’s group has perverted the old Reform concept that Jews are members of a religious group, not a people. I say perverted because he goes farther than the old Pittsburgh Platform which was merely non-Zionist. His group, founded in 1942, in the midst of the Second World War is adamantly anti-Zionist.

The Times article purports (Naman must have been the source, though what follows is not directly attributed to him) that “The rejection of Zion goes back to the Torah itself, with its accounts of the Hebrews’ rebelling against Moses on the journey toward the Promised land and pleading to return to Egypt.” But this is an absurd understanding of the text. Yes, the bible is replete with examples of the followers of Moses rejecting his leadership and pleading to return to Egypt, but that crowd was always pictured as the weak and cowardly, the slaves who were free of their old masters but not of their fears. It was that crowd that God in His despair almost destroyed (on several occasions) opting instead to allow it to die out over 40 years. It’s with that crowd that the Council looks to inspiration? Pshaw.

So I return to my original question. Must a Jew be a Zionist? Well, Jews can eat pork and still be Jews. They can vote Republican and still be Jews. They can be pro-Israel and pro-peace and pro-Israel and anti-withdrawal from the West Bank. All are Jews, but if to be a Jew requires stating “Next Year in Jerusalem” and meaning it, at least for the moment, at least for others who are persecuted, then maybe being an anti-Zionist is incompatible with being a Jew. Ka-Boom.

The Wedding of Jeremy and Amanda

There are those, and sometimes I am one, who think the world is going to hell in a handcart. For evidence, read a newspaper. But there are times, there are times…

Look up the word “kvell” in Leo Rosten’s classic The Joys of Yiddish and you’ll find: “To beam with immense pride and pleasure, most commonly over an achievement of a child or grandchild; to be so proudly happy ‘your buttons can burst.’” Then look up “naches” and you’ll see: “Proud pleasure, special joy—particularly from the achievements of a child.” Put them both together and you get “Only from your children can anyone shep (derive) such naches as makes you kvel.”

On June 13 (read that as 6/13 [613], the number of commandments according to traditional Jewish reckoning) my son Jeremy, the cantor at Congregation Beth Israel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, married Amanda née Ruppenthal.

I won’t bore you with all the details of the multi-day festivities, but will, if I may indulge myself mention one event that took during the post-ceremony celebration.

Among the guests were several cantorial classmates of Jeremy’s and some local cantors and cantor Brian Mayer of Temple Emanu-El, whose first bar mitzvah student Jeremy had been. As the evening wore down they sat in a circle, and each sang one of the traditional seven blessings over the bride and groom while the others hummed in the background. In between blessings they hummed a gentle niggun (a wordless Chassidic melody). It was an indescribably spiritual moment as the cantors serenaded one of their own.

This was my toast to the young couple:

“When I first heard Amanda’s voice it was on the telephone, the evening that Jeremy called to tell us that he had asked, and she that had said yes. The first thing I remember hearing was her laughter, her infectious giggle. I didn’t yet know what she looked like, but I could hear in her voice sweetness and joy and I knew then that like Jeremy, this was someone who could see the lighter side of things. Jeremy and Amanda, may your home always be filled with the joyous sounds of laughter.

“Amanda, we found out that night that you were a musician, a clarinetist. Jeremy the flautist had found a kindred spirit who could take black notes on lined paper and transform them into glorious sounds, giving pleasure to those who hear. Amanda and Jeremy, may your home always be filled with the sounds of music emanating from your talents.

“Jeremy, you were always the one in the family most connected to our religious traditions and practices, and so took your two loves, of music and Judaism, and combined them to become a cantor. Amanda, you found Judaism in college and now you, too, are a Jewish communal worker. Jeremy and Amanda, may your home always be a meeting place for like-minded people who strive to improve the world by maintaining a strong connection to Judaism’s core values.

“Jeremy, child of the Ocean State, and Amanda, daughter of the Mid-West, you begin your lives together with a trip to Costa Rica, hopefully the first of many sharing the sights and sounds of exotic places. May your home serve as a rendezvous point for people from around the world you have met and befriended.

“Jeremy and Amanda, as you celebrate the coming of the Sabbath bride each Friday evening, think of us, who live so far away, and in your minds, know that whether they are at our table or elsewhere I bless our children each Friday night. And in the fullness of time, when you are lucky enough to have a first child and then children, may you bless them each week, as I’ve blessed my three sons, and then Suzanne [my first daughter-in-law] and now you, Amanda who I welcome with love and joy into our family.

“To Jeremy and Amanda, long may their home be a source of joy for themselves and for those who love them.”

Well, maybe if there is such love in the world as is evident between Jeremy and Amanda the place ain’t going to hell in a handcart in such a great hurry. May you all know the naches we had, and kvell.

The Gaza Blockade disaster

For June 11, 2010
From the Old Olivetti
By Josh Stein

The world’s attention is on the catastrophic oil spill off the Gulf Coast and the president’s enfeebled response, a disappointment to his advocates (I include myself), confirmation to his foes. But while the oil continued to spew from the earth beneath the sea, on the high seas, Israel’s navy attempted to commandeer a flotilla bent on breaking its blockade of Gaza. The consummation, deaths aboard the lead ship, was devoutly to be wished by the organizers of the expedition. For them it was a no lose situation. If Israel allowed the boats to land it would be a small triumph. If the materials were seized without deaths, and, as the Israelis promised, checked then sent to Gaza, it would be a lesser victory, but not nearly as good theater as what actually happened. That was a bonanza—or was it a calculation? We’ll never know. Israel will transfer the food, medicine and building materials to Gaza and Hamas will have martyrs, the world will be able to blame Israel for the loss of life. The world will little note, nor long remember concurrent Muslim murders by Muslims. As Tom Friedman reminds in the Times, within the week, Muslim suicide bombers murdered nearly 100 Muslims in mosques in Pakistan and pro-Hamas gunmen destroyed a U.N.-sponsored summer camp in Gaza because it wouldn’t force Islamic fundamentalism down the throats of children. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/opinion/02friedman.html?hp)

On May 31, when I first heard the news of the deaths aboard ship I had a feeling akin to dispair. “Where,” I asked myself “are the people who planned and executed the raid on Entebbe airport to free hostages 2500 miles away?” Israel was the world’s hero back then on July 4, 1976, almost upstaging all the hoopla of the 200 year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Lightning fast the Israelis freed 100 people. According to the mission’s overall commander, Brigadier General Dan Shomron, the plan succeeded because since “no one expected the Israelis to take such risks … they took them.” One Israeli was killed, the leader of the strike force, Yonatan Netanyahu, elder brother of the current Prime Minister. But that was then. Now we have been snookered by people whose public relations skills are exceeded only by Israel’s ability to fall into an obvious trap.

Ehud Toledano, University Chair for Ottoman Studies, Department of Middle East and African History at Tel Aviv University (and a cousin of mine) writes in an E-mail that the commandos were sent into a mission that was ill-planned and ill-conceived by the high command of the navy.” There was “no, or totally insufficient intelligence, both in terms of info gathering and analysis... And, hence, a bad plan for what was wrongly supposed to be a group of peaceniks, but in fact were terror-trained Islamic radicals, ready to use violence in order to kill our soldiers, not just stop the takeover, which they knew they could not do.” He points out that information is “coming out now …to the effect that they were well organized, armed, and had thousands of dollars in their pockets. Families in Istanbul told the press a few hours ago that their relatives had a strong desire to die as martyrs.” This confirms a statement in last Wednesday’s Times that “The Gaza Freedom March made its motives clear in a statement before Monday’s deadly confrontation: ‘A violent response from Israel will breathe new life into the Palestine solidarity movement, drawing attention to the blockade.’” Ehud continues: Those seeking martyrdom “were on the upper deck, about 40 of them, with the [foreign sympathizers] staying on the lower decks, [who] therefore had no knowledge of what was being planned and executed upstairs. It is due to their high skilled professionalism that the commandos avoided being killed and ended up killing so few of the terrorists.”

Amos Oz, published in the same issue of the Times the Friedman column appears bemoans two simultaneous sieges—Israel of Gaza; Israel by Arabs. He wants Israel to sign a peace with the Fatah government in the West Bank, returning to the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the Palestinians’ capital. Once this is done, Hamas in Gaza will either continue to be isolated or will join with Fatah. More pie in the sky? I think so. Even an isolated Hamas still has the capacity to do irreparable harm, much as that tiny hole in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. Neither is going away; Israel can sign peace treaties with willing Arab partners, but the unwilling will still be there and president Obama will probably be as incapable of dealing with the one as he is with the other. I wish it weren’t so, but my wishes count for little.

From the pages of Al Jazeera

For May 28, 2010
From the Old Olivetti
By Josh Stein

There are those Jews, of which I am not one, who see in President Obama a crypto-Muslim or at least a crypto-enemy of Israel driving it to make suicidal concessions, and who feel those Jews who support him are dupes (or maybe dopes). There are other Jews of which I am not one, who are urging the president to force Israel, for its own good, to conciliate its policies towards the Palestinians so that a two-state solution can happen in our time.

Then there’s As’ad AbuKhalil.

He’s an articulate Lebanese-American professor of Political Science at California State University, Stanislaus who describes himself in his blog as an “Angry Arab” (http://angryarab.blogspot.com/). I first ran across him in an Al Jazeera posting (http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/201051664435120219.html).

The central thesis of AbuKhalil’s piece is that President Obama is a tool of the Zionists and that Arabs have betrayed Palestinians by urging compromise, not war. (This seems to fly in the face of those Jews who see Obama as a tool of the Arabs as well as those who see Palestinians as desirous of peace.) How typical is he? It’s hard to tell but his blog is filled with complimentary posts.

He begins with:

“Every year, Arabs around the world commemorate al-Nakba ... But poems and speeches are now too embarrassing to recite and Arab governments barely seem interested in remembering - so busy are they trying to win Israel's approval for direct or indirect negotiations. While in the past, Arab governments spent money combating Zionist propaganda, last year, the Arab League - with Saudi funding - purchased advertisements in Western newspapers with the aim of convincing Israel that Arab governments are, in fact, eager to make peace and normalize relations.”

I remember those ads and wonder why AbuKhalil thinks they reflect reality, not subterfuge, but it’s his piece. I don’t write for Al Jazeera. As to the Palestinians themselves, AbuKhalil sees evidence of betrayal.

“As far as the Palestinian Authority (PA) is concerned, revolutionaries belong in museums and [traditional Palestinian foods] are celebrated as the only elements of the rich tapestry of Palestinian national identity.”

Palestinian politicians are excoriated as though they were Zionists:
“Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, has become the new darling of the West. The Western press has, accordingly, produced an unending supply of laudatory and fawning pieces about the leadership of the man who …did not receive more than two per cent of the support of the Palestinian people in the last legislative elections.”
He sums up with, “The reality is that Arab regimes washed their hands of the Palestinian struggle long ago.”

The alternative to this cowardly behavior? Armed struggle.

“Armed struggle was responsible for bringing the Palestinian cause to the attention of the world….It delivered the Palestinian people from a time when their very status and identity was denied to a time when the UN had to recognize the fruits of Palestinian self-determination. Armed struggle also unified the Palestinian people under one umbrella and generated Arab support; PLO military operations inside Israel often featured Arabs from across the region. It also instilled a sense of pride among Palestinians and put an end to the sense of despair that prevailed in the wake of al-Nakba.”

I believe he’s right. Nobody was paying attention to Palestinians until they started hijacking airplanes in the 1960s, but oddly enough, Yasser Arafat, the man who authorized the hijacking of planes, the leader of the Intifada, was as bad as the rest. He is responsible for the weak Palestinian government in Ramallah “which operates at the discretion of Israel and its Western allies, protecting Israel from legitimate Palestinian armed struggle.” (I’m reminded when I read this of attacks made by some J Streeters who excoriate Elie Wiesel, Abe Foxman and Alan Dershowitz. Nobody, it turns out is a prophet in his own homeland.)

In a televised debate which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on February 23, 2010 AbuKhalil stated that President Obama “has given free rein to the Zionist lobby to do whatever it likes, both in terms of foreign policy and domestic policy.” Domestic policy, too? I’m a Zionist but I wait in vain to see Republicans proven right—that Obama will bring about a European-style Social Democracy.

As I asked, earlier, is AbuKhalil typical? He’s certainly articulate, if somewhat inconsistent. He cannot be ignored by the proponents of a two state solution.

Jewish Delis Finally in Israel

Tired of reading yet again about narrowly beating back divestment proposals in California Universities, (Berkeley and San Diego) by student government, I turned to the Forward for escapist folderol. Amidst the discussion of the serious and the portentous I found an article that surprised, yet rekindled memories of my Brooklyn youth.

I lived on Avenue M, just off East 27th Street which, when cars were not intruding, was also our stickball and sewer-to-sewer touch football playground. Farther down Avenue M was a shopping district including a couple of bakeries (Ebinger’s and the Elm), a movie theater (also called the Elm), a pizzeria, a Chinese restaurant and an Italian one, a toy store, grocery stores, an appetizer store, and two kosher delis, these latter a veritable foretaste of the world to come. One was the Palace, the other must have had a name, but I can’t recall it. In the delis everyone knew what everyone else had ordered as the waiters would shout to the kitchen, “Two salamis on rye, one tongue, two corn beefs and a side of fries.” The official drinks were Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray or root beer. In the summers, walking home from the elevated subway stop on East 16th Street, from whatever my summer job in the City was (we called Manhattan “The City”) I’d stop at the deli whose name I can’t remember and buy a knish or a hotdog mustard and sour kraut on a roll and eat it on the way home.

Such a street scene was duplicated on Avenues J and U and on Kings Highway so I assumed this was the norm in the Jewish world. You can then imagine my shock when I read in the Forward that a kosher deli in Tel Aviv called Ruben, was the first of its kind in the country! How could that be? Surely there are Ashkenazi Jews in Israel who would have brought the recipes and the skills to make corned beef, pastrami, tongue, knishes etc. from Eastern Europe.

Turns out, according to Gil Shefler who wrote the piece under review, that yes, there are Ashkenazi Jews in Tel Aviv but deli fare was not Eastern European in origin; it was American! Who knew? The idea wasn’t brought over to New York from the old countries; it was invented by immigrants from the old countries. Those who skipped the opportunity of coming to the land where the streets were paved with gold (AKA the Lower East Side) going instead straight to Palestine couldn’t bring what they didn’t have, so yes there are plenty of falafel joints, and humus is not unknown but only recently has the deli arrived.

So the question is how good is Ruben the delicatessen? Shefler (I picture him in my mind as munching on a knish) conducted an unscientific survey:
A recent immigrant from Washington, DC, who grew up on cold cuts from Katz’s Kosher Supermarket in Rockville, Md., gave it a measured seal of approval.
“The atmosphere’s a bit odd: It’s like a chic, scaled-down version of a deli. Where are the sweaty old Jews?” he said. “But for Israel it’s not bad. It’s what you’d expect a satisfactory Tel Aviv take on the food would be. I’ll be back because the meat tastes fine and I love my pastrami.” An immigrant from London, was even less enthusiastic (if you can imagine). While acknowledging that some guys from Long Island liked the place, “For me,” he said, “the sandwich here pales in comparison to the salt beef sandwiches served at Bloom’s in Golders Green, mostly on account of the bread.”

So a mixed reception ranging from “Not so great” to “Poor”—from the mavens who grew up with deli. To compound the negativity, food critic Janna Gur doubts the business plan. “Ruben is a fun place which serves good food, but I find it hard to believe deli foods will gain widespread popularity in Israel—it just doesn’t fit the mentality.” Maybe, but maybe Israelis are not the prime audience. You and I, Jews from America (especially refugees from New York or Chicago or Montreal) who, on a visit to the Holy Land hunger for corned beef on rye with a glezel Dr. Brown’s are, I imagine, the real sought after market.

OK; next week back to serious discussion of the world and its Jews.

Appalling Students

Nachshon Litzedek is a Jewish student at the University of California, Santa Cruz who says he has struggled with his Jewish identity since he was 12 when an Israeli soldier came to his class in Hebrew school, according to the Jewish Faculty Roundtable (JFR), a list-serve for Jewish faculty around the country addressing Jewish issues on college campuses in the United States.

According to JFR, Litzedek said, “The soldier tried to explain to explain to me why he had to shoot Palestinian kids who were throwing rocks at him. They were about the same age as me.” So, on April 20, on Yom Ha-Atzma’ut (Israel Independence Day) Litzedek was demonstrating against Israel. “This is an audacious day to protest,” he said. “One country’s celebration is another country’s catastrophe. I feel obligated to be a part of this because I’m Jewish. If anyone understands ghetto-ization, persecution and genocide, it’s the Jewish people. Specifically because of my Jewish values I can sympathize with the Palestinians.” There is an interesting choice of words here.

When Litzedek speaks of catastrophe he is using the English language word for al-nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” which is how Palestinians describe the victory of Israel in 1948/49. Odd, isn’t it. And, the JFR reports, in the Cesar Chavez Student Center at the university, pro-Palestinian students waved the Palestinian flag over recumbent white-faced bodies participating in a “dead-in,” arguing for divestment from any companies that did business with Israel. The argument was that Johnson & Johnson and Exxon-Mobil were selling products in the bookstore, which they felt was “appalling.” “Why are we investing money in killing people?” asked a Palestinian student. “This is supposed to be a campus that’s committed to social justice... All of the budget cuts wouldn’t be happening if it weren’t for war, so how do you feel about San Francisco State spending money on companies that fund the military?” Ah, Israel, it turns out, is responsible for the economic disaster that is California. Who knew?

Litzedek is appalled that Jewish soldiers defended themselves against rock throwers. I’m appalled that the powers-that-be in the Palestinian movement hid behind youthful rock throwers, cameras at the ready to record the massacre, disappointed when there was none, I imagine. I’m appalled that Litzedek seemed unaware that the previous day marked the commemoration of Jews killed in the various wars against surrounding Arab states and civilians killed by Arab terrorists.

The coincidence of dates is striking for another reason as well. On April 20, 1889, a son was born to Alois and Klara Hitler in the small Austrian border town of Braunau. That Israel could celebrate its coming into being on the anniversary of the birth of the Haman of the 20th century is an unparalleled vindication of the triumph of good over evil, a circumstance that occurs with depressing irregularity.

I remember when my youngest son was 11 and we were choosing when to celebrate his bar mitzvah. The synagogue had several dates available, but one stood out in my mind: April 20, 1986, what would have been Hitler’s 97th birthday. When my son was on the bimah, chanting his portion from the Torah, a thought came to mind: “Take that, you Nazi bastard; my son is having his bar mitzvah on your birthday! You fought a war to exterminate us, and failed. Today another Jewish boy has reached adulthood.” Not charitable words, perhaps, but I’m not sure why we should be charitable to those who wished us harm, who would have killed us all.

I don’t want to pretend that I associate calls for divestment with Nazism; it would be absurd. Such actions by Palestinians and their allies are a political means to achieve a political end, a political fight that ought to be countered by political action on the part of Israel’s friends.

Can there be peace in our time between Israel and the Palestinians? Some say yes, but I wonder if generations of hatred, mistrust, fear and loathing can be eradicated by ink on a page. It can happen, I know. Look at Germany and France, enemies since at least the mid-19th century, fighting over Alsace and Lorraine whose territory was French, then German, then French, then German and now French again with the agreement of Germany.

Yes, it can happen, but is now the time it will happen? Is now the time to create a bifurcated Palestine surrounding Israel, each half cut off from the other? Let us explore Palestinian textbooks and TV; then we'll know better.

Advocates of peace now seem to envision an Israeli/Palestinian relationship comparable to that between the U.S. and Canada. They should think instead India/Pakistan.

Passover Reflections 2010

As I sit at this old Olivetti, its motor humming, its keys clickety clacking, its ribbon newly dipped in ink, perhaps the last of its breed still in service, Passover looms. But as you read this, the Seders are memories; the labor of preparations rewarded with the twin joys of hearty fellowship and over abundance of food. The theme of the events was freedom (or if you prefer, of God’s deliverance of His people from slavery). At our Seders for the past few years we mix contemporary song with ancient tradition as we sing the non-Christian parts of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and, to the same tune, “Solidarity Forever.” We sing Negro spirituals (“Let My People Go”) we sing “We Shall Overcome” and Hatikvah. We talk of Civil Rights struggles of the past and debate (for our guests are usually of mixed political views) gay marriage and universal health care. And we do all this in the comfort of our home, in the warmth of friendship, in the security of knowing that in America we are free and safe.

But it wasn’t always this way, we know. In 1943 the Jews of Warsaw, the few who had managed to survive the deportations to Treblinka, knowing that the end was near, gathered what arms they could to make a last ditch effort to… to what, I’m not sure. Not to survive, they knew that was no longer a possibility, and they were not attempting to follow the example of the Jews of Masada or of York, committing suicide to prevent being captured/murdered/humiliated by oppressors. No, the Jewish leadership of Warsaw meant to die with the dignity of resistance to those who were trying to transform them into sheep led calmly to their deaths. If during the fighting a few could escape, so much the better. The sewers were a way out for some, going over the wall for others, but not for many. For the majority of the Jewish survivors of the past four years of systematic starvation and forced deportation to death camps, the goal was to go down fighting. For Jürgen Stroop, the SS commander assigned to crush the rebellion, the challenge was almost too much. Facing unacceptable losses of his men he resorted to burning buildings, one by one, forcing the surviving Jews to flee into adjacent buildings ready to be set alight or into the sewers or onto the streets where they could more easily be rounded up or picked off. In the end, he entitled his report on the successful destruction of the Jews “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is no more!” though my English language copy is simply called the “The Stroop Report.”

It was on Passover that the Jews of Warsaw chose to time their rebellion, doomed though it was. Liberation was not gained; there were no miracles, no plagues descending from the finger of God striking the evil ones. We do commemorate the event, however with Yom HaShoah, timed to coincide with the rebellion in Warsaw. In my shul (Temple Emanu-El), each year a diminishing number of survivors rises to recite the names of family and friends who were killed by the Nazis. At Roger Williams University this year Hillel’s third annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture will take place a few days early, on April 8 at 5:00 when we host Deborah Slier and Ian Shine, co-editors of the recently discovered letters of Philip (“Flip”) Slier, a young Dutch Jew who while in a Nazi work camp before his deportation to Sobibor, was able to send out 86 letters and postcards and one telegram, materials serendipitously found only in 1997. The lecture is free and open to the public. (Full disclosure notice: I am the faculty advisor of the RWU Hillel.)

On another subject entirely, Jerusalem was never intended to be the capital of Palestine. In the UN partition plan the city, which had a majority Jewish population, was designated an international zone. Only with the attempt by Jordan to crush the new Jewish state was East Jerusalem, including the entire old city, seized. Israel conquered it in 1967 not from the Palestinians who never controlled it but from King Hussein of Jordan. The newly announced settlements may not be wise, but they certainly are not illegal.