How important are umbrellas?

By Michelle Coleman
Your peak body that is. For Victorians, this is the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV).

Is it really ‘the voice of Victorian Jewry’? Does it truly represent 60 organisations and 65,000 Jews? Is it doing enough for our community? These are important questions to debate if we are committed to having a strong and engaged community whose needs are effectively championed within a wider multicultural Victoria.

Perhaps a good starting point is to define the role of a peak body. According to a comprehensive Industry Commission, a peak body must not only represent its members but provide much more:

“A peak body is a representative organisation that provides information dissemination services, membership support, coordination, advocacy and representation, and research and policy development services for members and other interested parties. ….. the peak council role does not involve direct service provision.”

Industry Commission (1995), Charitable Organisations in Australia. AGPS, Melbourne, p 181.

How does the JCCV measure up against these functional criteria?

Information dissemination services: Health check = 3 (on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being poor and 5 being excellent)
The JCCV offers two main communication services via email. What’s Nu is a weekly service filled with information and tips relevant to member organisations, while Jewish Community in Action goes out several times per year to approximately 10,000 individuals, keeping them informed about what’s happening in the Jewish community.

The JCCV plenum (the ‘parliament’ of the organisation) eight times per year is an opportunity not only for us to disseminate information to our members but also to listen to and debate the views of those in our community.

Given that the community numbers more than 60,000, the reach of the JCCV’s communications could be improved. We need to develop strategies to encourage more members of the community to subscribe. Let’s start now: if you’re not already receiving our e-bulletin click here.

Membership support: Health check = 4
Many peak bodies focus on representation at the expense of supporting their membership. While the JCCV may have been guilty of this in the past, this is not so today. The current executive and staff are focussing heavily on initiatives to support and provide development opportunities to our membership, including professional networking and development events, workshops for lay and professional leadership, and discussion groups for executive directors and CEOs.

The JCCV is also in the process of putting together a youth summit and a project to assist university students in combatting extremism on campus. The youth are our future and providing them with the support to grow into our next leaders is essential.

We are now providing good support services to our members. If we continue to grow and improve these, hopefully we will score a 5 in the not-too-distant future.

Coordination: Health check = 4
The JCCV coordinates the Community Calendar of Events, organises community events such as the Yom Hashoah commemoration and the annual volunteer awards night, coordinates with council for the special operation of traffic lights on Sabbaths and festivals, works with Victoria police to ensure the accurate collection of statistics on anti-Semitic incidents, and assists members in finding partners for collaboration on various initiatives.

Two Jews will always equal three opinions, but it’s reasonable to say that as a whole our community functions fairly smoothly. Little wonder then that other ethnic groups regularly tell us that the Victorian Multicultural Commission has advised them to model their community leadership on that of the JCCV.

Advocacy and representation: Health check = 4
The Victorian and Federal Governments, their agencies, the media and ethnic and religious groups have long recognised the JCCV as the representative body of the Victorian Jewish community.
The channels of communication between the JCCV and government, and the JCCV and various NGOs, are wide and open, with traffic flowing both ways.

Moreover, the JCCV’s advocacy is effective. For example, over the last 12 months we have successfully lobbied government against the BDS campaign and to preserve kosher slaughter.

While the JCCV’s member organisations are diverse, there are a number of significant organisations that for various reasons have chosen not to affiliate with the community’s roof body. We cannot claim to be fully representative while sectors of the community remain outside our umbrella. To them we say that we would be able to better represent you if you would come to the table. We believe that the security and welfare of our community is the responsibility of all.

Research and policy development services: Health check = 2
The JCCV does not provide comprehensive research services for our community. Research into various issues is being admirably led by Professor Andrew Markus of the Monash University Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation. The JCCV sits as an advisor on this project’s steering committee.

Nevertheless, with research in hand, the JCCV plenum has developed an extensive policy platform over the years.

The JCCV would be a more comprehensive and effective roof body if it were to provide research services for our community. Unfortunately, a lack of resources means this is not possible.

So to go back to our original questions, is the JCCV really the voice of Victorian Jewry? Does it truly represent 60 organisations and 65,000 Jews? We believe it does. Via our affiliates, we speak for the majority of our community and are recognised outside the community as the body to turn to for issues regarding our community. Our advocacy has been proven to achieve results and we are committed to continuing and indeed increasing our efforts on the community’s behalf into the future. We welcome your constructive feedback.

Is the JCCV doing enough for the community? Definitely not! There is so much more that we would like to do and could do if we were better resourced. To remain relevant, viable and effective, and to increase our efforts on the community’s behalf, we need the support of our community.

The JCCV is currently in the midst of our annual appeal. Your generous donation will ensure that all we do for you, for the organisations you value, and for our community can continue.

Ben Crystal as 'Julian Wald' in a still from the film Uprising (2001)

As part of the lead up to Limmud Oz 2012, we will be publishing some articles by presenters in order to give our readership a taste of some of sessions on offer. If you are a presenter and would like to write an article about your upcoming session, please contact the editors.

In the following article, Freda Hodge looks at the concept of Jewish Resistance during the Shoah.

In the period immediately following the war, little was known by the Allies and the general public about Jewish resistance to the Nazis during the Holocaust. It was assumed that the victims of the “final solution” went to their deaths unprotestingly, meekly allowing the Nazis to carry out their genocidal plans. The reality was counter to this view, and in the words of Yehuda Bauer, “ …the Jews’ resistance, whatever its form, is as significant as their death. Slaughtered they were, but not like sheep.” The resistors understood that their chances of surviving the war were infinitesimal, and they chose to die fighting the enemy and, hopefully, inflicting damage upon the might of the Germans at the same time.

My session will explore the concepts of different types of resistance ranging from armed combat and sabotage, to acts of spiritual resistance. In the ghettos, Jews were isolated from the outside world and from other ghettos. Starvation, disease, exposure and Nazi brutality killed many thousands of the ghetto inhabitants. Few Jews found hiding places on the “Aryan” side of the ghetto where they were constantly aware that the local population might betray them and report them to the Germans.

The Jewish populations faced innumerable obstacles that rendered successful acts of resistance almost impossible to achieve. Examples of such hindrances were: the difficulty in obtaining arms, isolation in the ghettos, hostility from the occupied population, starvation and overwork which sapped the strength and the will of every individual. Often the Judenrate were opposed to resistance in any form as they believed that it was more effective to placate the enemy and to become useful to them hoping that this might save Jewish lives. The Polish and Russian partisan detachments did not welcome Jews into their ranks and often turned upon the Jewish partisans killing them and looting their arms. Nazi methods of deception and terror exacerbated the helplessness of the Jewish population, and one of the most pernicious of Nazi tactics was “collective responsibility”. The Germans retaliated for acts of resistance by punishing or murdering entire families or communities.

For the survivors of the Holocaust, the success of resistance was not measured in terms of victory, but in the fact that it had taken place at all. In the ghettos and the forests, in the extermination camps and the slave labour camps, resistance manifested itself in various ways, ranging from sabotaging railroad tracks to organising prayer meetings and observing Jewish religious rituals. Partisan groups, underground personnel and individuals endured appalling hardships and danger to oppose the Germans. They faced brutal punishments or death at the hands of the Nazis if caught carrying out anything deemed to be resistance. I will describe Individual eyewitness accounts of partisan and underground activity in ghettos and forests, thus bringing to life the complexity and danger of engaging in acts of resistance.

It is estimated that during the period of World War II, 20 000 to 30 000 Jewish men and women fought heroically as partisans operating from the dense forests of Eastern Europe. In addition, research has shown that armed Jewish resistance took place in at least 5 major ghettos, 45 smaller ghettos, 5 major concentration and extermination camps and 18 forced labour camps. Jewish resistance was driven by desperation, the desire for revenge and the need to restore the image of Jewish identity, to preserve Jewish culture and religion in order to sabotage Hitler’s plans to annihilate Jews and to obliterate their history.

Freda Hodge is a volunteer at the Melbourne Holocaust Centre and has also published articles on linguistics and English literature.

In response to a recent discussion on Galus Australis relating to the ethical and moral issues that arise if one chooses to serve in the Israeli military, Larry Stillman has submitted the following article.

The key issue relates to the view that the Israeli Army is an army of occupation in the Occupied Territories and the occupation has little to do with defence imperatives but a huge amount to do with expanding Israeli territory well beyond any strategic necessity.  I am not questioning the fight against terrorism, or the principle of self-defence under fire, but the fact is that ‘defence of Israel’ has been extended to institutionalised maltreatment of civilians under the Occupation of the West Bank in situations that have nothing to do with armed resistance.

These acts often occur to people (including children), not even engaged in acts of violence or minor acts of resistance in which the response has been disproportionate.    The kinds of activity that Israel is engaged in have been well debated in discussions about just and unjust wars under the influence of such writers as Michael Walzer.  Thus, Raymond Kou has written that The Israeli Army considers the situation as an ‘armed conflict short of war’.  However, this imprecise definition also creates a legal and moral hole: the Palestinians are undefined individuals who fall between civilian and combatant categories, but with shifting guidelines on their treatment by the IDF” [“Occupation and the Just War” International Relations 22 (2008), p. 305].

Over the years, it has been revealed that Israeli commanders have been consistently loose with the rules of engagement and many human rights abuses occurred, though these claims encounter predictably strong official opposition. Soldiers are thus in breach of Israel’s own Code of Conduct called The Spirit of the IDF, particularly point 6. “Soldiers must accord dignity and respect to the Palestinian population and those arrested”, as attested in the work of such organizations as Mahsom Watch, which, for example demonstrate the Israeli army does little to protect Palestinians from settler violence.

The result of this undeclared occupation are consistent breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which covers the treatment of civilian populations under occupation, including issues such as harassment, forced transfer of populations, transfer or theft of property (including land for settlements, also known as colonies), restriction of movement, collective punishment, or infringement on the rights of children.  Israel is a signatory to the convention.

However, even if Israel claims that its acquisition of territory is ultimately benign, and leads to increased living standards and so on (as it often claimed in defence of the Israeli presence), there is another question and that is, as Walzer says, “What do the inhabitants want? The land follows the people. The decision as to whose sovereignty was legitimate … belonged by right to the men and women who lived” [In Just and Unjust Wars, p. 55].  Palestinians don’t want an Israeli presence, benign or otherwise, and the longer the Occupation continues, the more difficult a bilaterally acceptable agreement will be to establish.  The Oslo failure is an indication that Israel needs to make much more real concessions in response to the overtures and opportunities made through the Arab (Saudi) Peace Plan and so on.

Because Israel is so linked to many of our lives—and claims to represent our interests—we also have every right to insist that it holds itself true to democratic, legal and ethical principles,  Jewish or universal.

If we cannot question how the force of arms is used, or the ‘justice’ of its occupation then democracy is threatened because the principle of ‘might is right’ prevails.  This is the view taken by many Israel progressives, including for example, Gershom Gorenberg-who considers himself an orthodox Jew and a Zionist—who states that  ‘settlement project’  as part of the occupation has turned occupation territory into a realm where, ultimately, there [is] no law’ [The Unmaking of Israel, p. 88].   The soldiers are there to project the settlement project, not defend Israel. The settlement project has been expanded over the years from a tiny of number of people to 300,000 residents, but these numbers do not excuse Israel from its legal and ethical responsibilities.

One result of this ethical and moral slide from the ideal of ‘tohar ha-neshek’, or purity of arms,  as well as ‘havlagah’ (restraint) was the the ‘Combatants’ Letter in 2002—a statement of refusal to serve in the Occupied Territories was . Significantly, their letter stated:

“ We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people. We hereby declare that we shall continue serving the Israel Defence Force in any mission that serves Israel’s defence. The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them.”

Unfortunately, a response that justifies militarism and occupation appears to come out of two trends in Jewish religious nationalism.  The first, to use the words of the philosopher Emil Fackenheim in his To Mend the World)  , is that we are  commanded to do everything to deny Hitler a posthumous victory.  Harold Schulweiss, making critical remarks about Elie Wiesel, said that the danger with this kind of thinking is that it become a ‘cudgel’ against recognising  others ‘who have their claims of suffering’, and this becomes linked to constant cries of an ‘existential crisis’  in Israel’s existence, to justify almost all and any activity in its defence.

Second, as an extension of the teachings of Rav Abraham Isaac Kook, his son, and others, the sacredness of the land of Israel has become a predominant doctrine in religious nationalist and Zionist haredi thinking. Anyone or thing that stands in the way should be removed or has no rights. The worst case of this kind of thinking is found in a stream of thinking which justifies the killing of Palestinian women and children found in works such as ‘The King’s Doctrine’ written by a settler rabbi. Increasingly, this ideology is having an effect in the Israeli army, where many of those command positions actually live in the Occupied Territories and thus have an interest in preserving Israeli rule, whether or not the Israel government continues to want to hold on to them.

Thus, when we have young people in Australia being indoctrinated about a ‘greater Israel’ in which Palestinians have no place or are a nuisance, and such people join the Israeli military they are in grave danger of becoming ethical and moral abusers or worse.  The excuse cannot be made that we do not know about such matters or they are irrelevant for young people who make aliyah.  Eighteen is legal adulthood, and the law for an adult includes the assumption that one is able to make an informed choice. The fact is that the Occupation has been with us for over 40 years now and I find it hard to believe that any young Jewish person is unaware that the Occupation is not benign.

Choices can be made.  Many Israelis choose not to serve in the Occupied Territories by either refusing service there, or undertaking alternate forms of conscription.  The same choices are available to Australians who commit themselves to a life in Israel.

For more reading, see the following:

Norman Solomon, ‘Judaism and the Ethics of War’  International Review of the Red Cross 87 (June 2005)

Yeshahayhu Leibowitz, ‘Heroism.’ In Cohen and Mende- Flohr (eds),  Contemporary Jewish Thought.

Larry Stillman would like to stress that this article is written from a personal capacity.

One of these sessions will be on The Finkler Question and Jewish Identity. The Finkler Question, authored by Howard Jacobson (known in some quarters as “The English Philip Roth” although he apparently prefers to be known as “The Jewish Jane Austen”), was the Man Booker Prize winner for 2010, and was noted for its combination of brilliant comedic wit with pathos.

The novel centres on the friendship between three characters, two of them Jews and the other a philo-Semite. Amongst other things, the novel explores Jewish identity in the Diaspora, particularly in a climate of growing anti-Israel sentiment.

Panellists include Bram Presser, Mandi Katz, and Philip Mendes.

We encourage all our Melbourne-based readers to come along to participate in our panel discussion. For those have not yet had the privilege of reading this extremely humorous and insightful novel, there’s still time to read it, but you better get a move on, as Limmud Oz is just around the corner!

In the meantime, feel free to suggest any talking points in the comments sections.

Sam Stoller (2nd from left) & Marty Glickman (3rd from left), removed from the US 1936 relay team by Avery Brundage, in order to not offend Hitler any further following victories by African American athletes such as Jesse Owens

By Ashley Browne
So how many women will be competing for Saudi Arabia at this year’s summer Olympic Games?

The answer is zero, just as it has been at all eight Olympics to which the Saudis have sent a team since first competing in Munich in 1972.

Once again, the Saudis have resisted all calls to emerge from the Stone Age and to allow women to represent their country at the Olympics. This time around will be the only nation to do so.

Brunei and Qatar have opened their selection to women in 2012 and certainly in the case of Qatar, it had little choice but to do so given the aspirations it has to host the 2020 Summer Games.

The Saudis played it beautifully, telling the world it was considering a change in selection policy. Once the utterly predictable decision to stick with the status quo was made, it was too late for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to do anything about it.

Human rights activists have started a campaign to ban Saudi Arabia from the Olympics, but not much will come of it. After all, if women don’t even have the right to drive a car in the kingdom, what chance would they have of swimming, running and jumping for their country.

If the IOC had any smarts, it would put the Saudis on notice now that the situation for Rio de Janeiro in 2016 must change, but we’re not holding our breath about that one.

Nor are we holding out much hope of the IOC yielding to another request, one that we think is equally reasonable.

The London Olympics will mark the 40^th anniversary of the darkest episode in Olympic history – the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Games in Munich.

The efforts by the IOC to commemorate the lives of the murdered athletes since then have been lukewarm at best. There was a memorial service in the days afterwards, but even then IOC chairman Avery Brundage barely mentioned the victims and used the occasion for a ‘state of the Olympics’ speech and to rail against the encroaching professionalism and to shout down those arguing for Rhodesia, as it was known at the time, to be booted out of the Games.

Brundage’s lack of empathy wasn’t a surprise to many observers. He was the same guy, who when in charge of the US team in 1936 agreed to the removal of sprinters Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller from the team in order to appease the Nazi organisers of the Berlin Olympics.

Google “Avery Brundage and anti-semitic” and you will be left in little doubt of what people thought of Brundage then and now.

There are memorials to the slain Israelis at the Olympic village in Munich and of course, in Israel. The only other Olympic host nation to have erected any sort of monument is Australia, where a plaque sits at the base of one of the light towers at what is now known as ANZ Stadium at Homebush.

This year, change.org has taken up the cudgels, launching an online petition calling for a minute’s silence in memory of murdered athletes during the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. There have been such calls before, but this time the campaign has gone viral.

Writes Ankie Spitzer, the wife of Andrei Spitzer, one of the murdered Israelis: “Silence is a fitting tribute for athletes who lost their lives on the Olympic stage. Silence contains no statements, assumptions or beliefs and requires no understanding of language to interpret.

“I have no political or religious agenda. Just the hope that my husband and the other men who went to the Olympics in peace, friendship and sportsmanship are given what they deserve. One minute of silence will clearly say to the world that what happened in 1972 can never happen again. Please do not let history repeat itself.”

Chances are strong that this plea, like all those before them, will fall upon deaf ears. The Australian Olympic Committee could make a representation on this behalf, such is the strong standing our country has in the Olympic movement. But AOC chairman John Coates has bigger fish to fry such as the seating arrangements at the forthcoming fundraiser that the Prime Minister has chosen not to attend.

Having chosen not to stand up to the Saudi Arabia, winner of one silver and one bronze medal it its Olympic history, the IOC has shown itself to be a bit soft when it comes to the issue of human rights. But a minute’s silence at the London Olympics, for all victims of terror, not just the murdered Israelis, would send a powerful message.

Is the IOC up to it?

Ashley Browne is a senior writer for AFL Media and the co-founder and consulting editor of leading Australian sports blog, BackPageLead. He is a former national editor of the Australian Jewish News. You can follow him on Twitter @afl_hashbrowne

Every year, the Melbourne Orthodox community conducts a communal Yom Ha’atzmaut  (Israeli Independence Day) prayer service. But it is a community service in name only. The rabbis and presidents of most Orthodox congregations do attend (most rabbis being allocated parts of the service to lead), but very few of their members. The overwhelming majority of the attendants tend to be Mizrachi members, the venue where the service is always held.

Possible reasons for this are:

• The service may be perceived as a Mizrachi one (apart from the venue, Mizrachi plays a major role in organising the service and its format; its members take a disproportionate part in leading it) so that others may feel excluded.

• People may not regard a special Yom Ha’atzmaut prayer service as important – perhaps this view is shared by the rabbis and leaders of the other congregations; perhaps the rabbis and leaders do regard it as important, but don’t strongly push it; perhaps they do push it, but don’t succeed in motivating their congregants to share their views or put them into practice.

• People are very parochial when it comes to shules, and often don’t feel inclined to attend services at shules other than their own, which they feel part of.

One solution may be to hold the service at another synagogue. That should at least lead to increased attendance from members of that synagogue, as they would feel more “ownership” of it, especially if their rabbi and leaders promoted it. Perhaps there would be an advantage in a venue like Caulfield Shule, which may be perceived as more “neutral”, and belonging to the community as a whole. (Seating both men and women downstairs would fill the considerably larger space more effectively, as well as allowing the women to feel less like spectators). One would expect that Mizrachi members, being Religious Zionists already committed to the importance of prayer being an integral part celebrating Israel’s independence, would attend wherever the service is held.

But I believe that the best way to increase attendance and participation is to abandon the attempt at the community service, and for Yom Ha’atzmaut prayer to be reclaimed by the individual congregations.  It’s time to treat Yom Ha’atzmaut as a “real” chag – so that just as each individual congregation holds its own service, in its own way, for Pesach, Rosh Hashana, and Purim, so they should now do for Chag Ha’atzmaut.

We all know that chometz is forbidden on Pesach even when mixed into food in minute quantities (Shulchan Aruch O.C. 447:4, Mishnah Berurah 35, Chazon Ish 119:12). Since these days the ingredient lists are long and manufacturing methods complex one is faced with an almost insurmountable problem of investigating every manufactured item in the house. This stringency only applies, however if the product in question is a food item. Something that is not a food can be used and owned with confidence, as the very issue of chametz does not apply. How are we to define what is a food item? The Talmud (Pesachim 15b) says that an item is not food if a dog refuses to eat it (“Eino Ra’ui L’achilas Kelev”). Tosafot (to Pesachim 15b) even exempts bread from the definition of chametz if it has become stale to a point where a dog would reject the item.

So a question of whether a non-food product can be considered chametz for Pesach should be decided not by a halacha expert or a kashrus expert but by a dog expert. And as someone with a decade-plus experience in owning and looking after dogs I can say with certainty that no dog, no matter how hungry, would choose to consume shampoo, deodorant, shoe polish, plastic plates or perfume. When faced with an unfamiliar food dish you and I have no means, other than visual examination to ascertain the edible state of the food. We may well opt to swallow a small piece to find out what the dish tastes like. Not so the dog.

The dog has a well-developed olfactory mechanism to inform it of the taste and flavour of food without touching it and over considerable distance. As such, no dog in his right mind would consume a product that is toxic to it and has a strong noxious smell. Below in a short Video in which you can see me perform a simple scientific and repeatable test that will convince even the most cautious sceptics that the product in question will not be consumed by a dog and can therefore be used safely on Pesach.

So to all those confused about the permissibility of common household products on Pesach I bring great news: Don’t waste your time buying expensive Kosher-certified cleaners and toiletries. Send your questions to me and I will gladly apply the ‘dog test’ to the products of your choice. Moreover – unlike other kosher agencies my testing services are free. Did I hear you ask – “What will I do will all that leftover money after Pesach?” Write to me and I will gladly send you a list of charities in Australia and overseas. Goodness knows – they could do with some help.

Dr Vadim Chelom is a Veterinarian, a writer and an educator. You can read his blog at: www.safetypets.wordpress.com

Intermarriage was much rarer when there was more anti-Semitism of the type featured in this 1947 Oscar winner

In an article first published in the New Jersey Jewish News, Paul Golin argues that fear of intermarriage is not a logical reason to fund Jewish day schools. It is equally relevant to the Australian Jewish community.

A classic Jewish-communal false narrative re-emerged recently in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, of all places, by Peter Beinart, of all people. (See “The Jewish Case for Vouchers”).

The narrative goes something like this: if only Jews were more Jewishly educated, they’d intermarry less.  Let’s increase support to Jewish education like day schools so Jews better understand why they shouldn’t intermarry.

Why is this narrative false? And why does it continue to be propagated?

There’s no debate that intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews began its ascent in America during the mid-1960s, from single-digit rates to nearly 50% of all marrying Jews today. Since the late 1980s, there have been more intermarried households created than in-married (Jewish/Jewish) households.

Clearly, something dramatic happened in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s to foster this change.  From the narrative about Jewish education that Beinart and others suggest, you’d think there existed a flourishing network of Jewish day schools, sleep-away camps, and supplemental education in the early 1900s that suddenly got wiped away in the middle of the century—and then we all intermarried.

Of course that’s not what happened, and in fact, there’s no evidence to suggest that Jews were better Jewishly educated back when intermarriage rates were negligible. Jewish education in all denominations is stronger today than ever before. Jewish educators are more professionalized, colleges across the nation now include Jewish Studies courses and majors, and supplemental education is supported by peer trips to Israel and service-learning initiatives. Exponentially more day schools were created after intermarriage rates rose than ever existed before it.

It wasn’t higher levels of Jewish education that kept intermarriage rates so low in the first half of the 20th Century, and it’s not lack of Jewish education that drives high intermarriage rates today. There are many other, more important factors. Primary among them: the rest of America simply stopped hating us.

While American Jews never faced genocidal anti-Semitism, before the 1960s a marriage between a Jew and non-Jew was equally, if not more, tragic to the Gentile parents than to the Jewish parents. American anti-Semitism declined dramatically after the Civil Rights Movement, pride in Israel’s 1967 war victory, and Jewish success in a wide variety of professional endeavours. Today, Americans are philo-Semites. When it comes to marriage, many consider Jews to be a “catch.”

Of course, if this was still the 1940s and they wanted to “catch” us, they’d have to come to our neighbourhoods to find us, because most Jews were effectively ghettoized and quotas kept us out of many jobs and colleges. Today Jews are spread as far into the suburbs and exurbs as anybody else, and work and study in all the same places as any other Americans. And people marry who they meet, study, and work with. A majority of Jews no longer see choice of marriage partner as the make-or-break statement about their own Jewish identity that many communal leaders still believe it is.

For leaders in the Jewish community who spend almost all their time serving and working among their fellow Jews, it might be easy to forget that Jews are only 2% of the US population. But Jews are only 2% of the US population! That our intermarriage rate is only 50% is actually a remarkable success. Compared to other ethnicities in this country—and many Ashkenazi Jews do see their Jewishness as an ethnic identity—our intermarriage rates are no worse than third and fourth generation Irish-Americans or Italian-Americans. Intermarriage rates among Japanese-American women have reached as high as 90%.

So why is the anti-intermarriage narrative solely focused on Jewish education?  The obvious reason is because nobody is going to suggest we turn back the clock on societal acceptance or the freedom to live where we want, even as we wax nostalgic and recall a time of low intermarriage rates as the “good old days.”

The less obvious explanation may be the more powerful: it’s about money. In Peter Beinart’s case it’s about getting the US taxpayer to cover his children’s day school tuition through school vouchers. For the organized Jewish community, it’s about garnering support for one of its core businesses, Jewish education. Nothing seems to sell to Jews better than fear—in this case, fear of intermarriage and of the intermarried—and fear is best spread by misinformation.

Beinart’s op-ed quotes a pseudoscientific study claiming that day schools increase a Jewish child’s likelihood of marrying another Jew “by 14 percentage points.” To claim, as that study does, that you can “control” for all other factors like whether the individual’s social structure is within an Orthodox or secular community, or whether she believes in God or not, or whether he later lives in Seattle or the Upper West Side, in order to proclaim day-school attendance as the cause for Jewish in-marriage breaks the very basics that any Sociology 101 student would learn about cause-and-effect.

Beinart’s misunderstanding of demography is also apparent when he compares the American Jewish community’s 50% intermarriage rate to those in other countries that send more of their children to Jewish day schools, suggesting that Canada’s 35% intermarriage rate or France’s 40% rate somehow represents “success.” A 35% individuals intermarriage rate actually means that there are as many intermarried households created as in-married households (if three Jews intermarrying at 35%, two of those Jews marry each other to create one households, while one of those Jews marries a non-Jew to also create one household). In France, it means that for as long as they’ve “successfully” maintained “only” a 40% intermarriage rate, there have likely been more children born to intermarried than in-married parents. The difference in Jewish population growth in those countries will not be determined by Jewish day schools, but rather by the lack of denominations that accept patrilineal Jews, which will push away many more families than we lose in the US.

Whether or not Beinart should be responsible for understanding the nuance between the “individuals” versus “couples” rates of intermarriage is debatable, but one group that must understand Jewish statistics better is our Jewish communal leadership, which continues to hire the same two or three agenda-driven advocate/sociologists over and over again for decades. If you really want to know how effective your programs are, or what is really happening among the Jewish population, why hire Jews who care deeply about seeing specific outcomes? Why not hire any of the countless non-Jewish firms who couldn’t care less about what they find, and only care that the way they find it is scientifically sound?

Because, of course, then you have to be prepared to have your narrative challenged.  A new intermarriage narrative has emerged in much of the community, even as the old one refuses to die. The new narrative demonstrates how essential the inclusion of intermarried families is in Jewish life, even in day school communities. In the new narrative, Jewish education is not a vaccine against dreaded outcomes, it’s the sharing of wisdom and heritage that impacts positively on individuals, whether they have two, one, or no Jewish parents. Fear of intermarriage as a motivating factor for doing anything needs to be expunged from our communal institutions, to be replaced by the joy of sharing what we love about being Jewish with all who might benefit.

Paul Golin is associate executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute and co-author with Rabbi Kerry Olitzky of the forthcoming book, How to Raise Jewish Children…Even When You’re Not Jewish Yourself.

Courtesy of www.njjewishnews.com

While over the years, based on a range of reports, the Catholic Church has been the major public culprit in the way they have handled sexual abuse allegations, clearly they are not the only ones within the religious sphere. From my own experience and knowledge I can testify that there has been widespread sexual abuse against many children within the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Victoria, which was practically common knowledge to both community members and its leaders.

What has also become abundantly clear is that the mishandling of these cases of abuse by the ultra-Orthodox institutions has been negligent if not criminal. There have been numerous examples where victims and their families have been made to suffer, subsequent to the abuse, by these institutions and their leaders, especially when they have sought to seek justice. There are also a number of cases in which these religious institutions and their leaders irresponsibly removed paedophiles from their institution without ensuring justice for the victims and ignoring the safety of other children, who in some cases were later abused by the same perpetrator.

From my personal experience I hold the Yeshivah Centre directly responsible for the widespread sexual abuse that has gone on there over many years. They knew about it yet failed to act. Through their mixed messages, non-cooperation with the authorities and insensitivity I am deeply concerned that the Yeshivah Centre has not understood the gravity of the situation, nor how they should deal with these serious allegations. They are continuing the victimise the former victims and their families. They are being disingenuous when they claim to be doing all they can for the victims and the police—in fact it is an outright lie.

I am convinced that this wide-ranging inquiry—including the ability to compel witnesses to testify—would uncover more evidence of abuse and cover-ups.

For the sake of justice for past victims and for the future safety of our children, this proposed course of action is imperative—it is indeed long overdue. No institution should be above the law and it is about time these religious institutions are held to account. In our case, many of the former victims of the Yeshivah Centre plan to hold that institution and its leaders to full account in due course.

The most entertaining aspect of the episode was watching Dawkins on several occasions bellow at the audience (whenever they laughed) “Why is that funny?!” As one rather witty aired tweet alluded to, this would be, along with the question of whether there exists a deity, one of the great scientific or philosophical questions that Dawkins would never be able to answer.

At rather one dramatic point, host Tony Jones tried to paint Pell as having said something anti-Semitic, an event that brought much joy to the face of Dawkins, as well as that of Jones.

TONY JONES: George Pell, can I just come back to you on this question of the existence of God. Why would God randomly decide to provide proof of his existence to a small group of Jews 2,000 years ago and not subsequently provide any proof after that?

GEORGE PELL: Well, I don’t think there’s ever been any scientific proof. I don’t believe God does anything randomly, although he might set up he might set up a system which works, apparently through, you know, through chance, through random but if you want something done, you’ve got to ask somebody. It’s no good, say, my asking everyone in the congregation will you would do something. Normally you go to a busy person because you know they’ll do it and so for some extraordinary reason God chose the Jews. They weren’t intellectually the equal of either the Egyptians or the…

TONY JONES: Intellectually?

GEORGE PELL: Intellectually, morally…

TONY JONES: How can you know intellectually?

GEORGE PELL: Because you see the fruits of their civilisation. Egypt was the great power for thousands of years before Christianity. Persia was a great power, Caldia. The poor – the little Jewish people, they were originally shepherds. They were stuck. They’re still stuck between these great powers.

TONY JONES: But that’s not a reflection of your intellectual capacity, is it, whether or not you’re a shepherd?

GEORGE PELL: Well, no it’s not but it is a recognition it is a reflection of your intellectual development, be it like many, many people are very, very clever and not highly intellectual but my point is…

TONY JONES: I’m sorry, can I just interrupt? Are you including Jesus in that, who was obviously Jewish and was of that community?

GEORGE PELL: Exactly.

TONY JONES: So intellectually not up to it?

GEORGE PELL: Well, that’s a nice try, Tony. The people, in terms of sophistication, the psalms are remarkable. In terms of their buildings and that sort of thing, they don’t compare with the great powers. But Jesus came not as a philosopher to the elite. He came to the poor and the battlers and for some reason he choose a very difficult but actually they are now an intellectually elite because over the centuries they have been pushed out of every other form of work. They’re a – I mean Jesus, I think, is the greatest the son of God but, leaving that aside, the greatest man that ever live so I’ve got a great admiration for the Jews but we don’t need to exaggerate their contribution in their early days.

Leaving aside Tony Jones’ error regarding historical timeframes (2000 years??), it was wrong of him to try to imply Pell had smeared the Jewish people as an intellectually inferior people. It is a reasonable statement that from the point in history when the Hebrew patriarchs are believed to have lived right through to when the Exodus is believed to have happened, the Egyptians were a far more technologically advanced society than that of their Hebrew contemporaries.

As Pell clarified, intellectual capacity is not intellectual development. Our Hebrew ancestors were not less intelligent than their Egyptians contemporaries, but they were at an earlier stage of their development. The Egyptians had already reached their zenith as a civilisation, a civilisation that would soon be at its end, whereas Jewish civilisation was in its relative infancy.

In the above exchange, Pell could perhaps have been accused of having spoken clumsily, but in fairness to him, it probably wasn’t a topic he was expecting to have to speak about.

Other points of interest included Dawkins confusing atheism for agnosticism.

I live my life as though there is no God but any scientist of any sense will not say that they positively can disprove the existence of anything. I cannot disprove the existence of the Easter Bunny and so I am agnostic about the Easter Bunny. It’s in the same respect that I am agnostic about God.

In actuality, Dawkins is an avowed atheist who lives his life, like most of us, as an agnostic. After all, on the program, Dawkins, not without a modicum of pride, refers to explaining evolution as his “life’s work”. It seems contradictory to have pride in a “life’s work” if one is really operating with the understanding that all a human being amounts to is a complex set of atoms. (For more on this reasoning, see here).

As for the Cardinal, he likely disappointed many critics and followers alike who have a simplistic understanding of religious belief when he stated he believes that human beings have evolved from primate ancestors. Pell made the mistake of saying humans had evolved from Neanderthals, when orthodox scientific theory in fact places Neanderthals on a side branch from Homo Sapiens, both species having had a common ancestor. Instead of graciously accepting that Pell was not rejecting evolutionary theory as Dawkins would have posited, Dawkins instead rudely tried to embarrass Pell for having the details wrong. This from a man who routinely misunderstands the religious beliefs of those he belittles.