[Note: Yesterday – March 9, 2022 – I posted an article about the Leitz family saving hundreds of Jews before World War II and noted that Israel and America have the moral obligation to welcome refugees from Ukraine. Judy Maltz of Haaretz posted this article yesterday detailing what Israel is doing vis a vis Ukrainian Jews and even Russian Jews who want to make aliyah. There is no mention, as yet, about Ukrainian non-Jews coming to Israel, though reports yesterday suggested that most are going to European countries and Great Britain. Clearly, this is a tragedy of massive proportions. I’m happy to hear about what Israel is doing. I print this from Haaretz because one can only read it with a subscription. I recommend that anyone interested in Israel take out a subscription. Haaretz is the NYT of Israel.]

By Judy Maltz – Haaretz, March 9, 2022

‘We will fill up the planes, come back to Israel, and then fly back again and pick up more refugees,’ Jewish Agency deputy director general Yehuda Setton explained

Israel is gearing for a major airlift of Ukrainian Jews who have fled to bordering countries, leaders of the Jewish Agency announced on Wednesday.

“If all goes well, we will bring tens of thousands to Israel in the coming year,” said Yaakov Hagoel, acting chairman of the Jewish Agency, in a press briefing conducted via Zoom. Hagoel arrived in Poland on Tuesday to oversee preparations for bringing growing numbers of Jewish refugees from Ukraine to Israel. Many of these refugees are being housed in shelters in Warsaw, after having crossed the Ukrainian-Polish border near Lviv.

“Instead of hundreds a week, there will be thousands of immigrants from Ukraine each week,” said Hagoel. “And instead of people waiting for planes, we will have planes waiting for people.”

The acting chairman said he would be returning to Israel on Wednesday night on a plane with 150 refugees from Ukraine. Another 100 Jewish refugees from Ukraine were scheduled to arrive on a separate flight from Romania.

On instructions from Israel’s Foreign Ministry, the Jewish Agency removed its envoys from Ukraine several days after the Russian invasion. Hagoel said that the government had agreed for them to return to Ukraine starting Thursday. Having envoys back on the ground, he said, would help the aliyah operation run more smoothly.

Yehuda Setton, deputy director general of the Jewish Agency, said Israel would charter flights to Poland, Romania and Hungary to pick up the Jewish refugees stranded at Ukraine’s borders. Because Moldova’s airspace is still closed, refugees who have crossed into that Eastern European country will, he said, have to make their way to Romania to board the flights.

“We will fill up the planes, come back to Israel, and then fly back again and pick up more refugees,” he explained.

Setton, who is in charge of the situation room set up to handle this new wave of aliyah from Ukraine, said the Jewish Agency also planned to station envoys at other points along Ukraine’s borders where large numbers of refugees could be found so as to begin assisting them as soon as possible.

Last year, about 3,000 immigrants from Ukraine arrived in Israel, and in the past decade, a total of 51,000 have immigrated. An estimated 200,000 Ukrainians are eligible to immigrate to Israel and receive automatic citizenship under the Law of Return.

Hagoel said that the Jewish Agency was also seeing rising interest in aliyah among Russian Jews. On Tuesday night, close to 400 immigrants from Russia landed in Israel on two separate flights.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, roughly 2,000 immigrants have arrived in Israel from these two countries. In most cases, they had already been approved for aliyah before the war erupted. Their flights, however, were moved up because of the new situation on the ground.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-plans-airlift-of-ukrainian-jews-in-major-aliyah-operation-1.10663960

I recently became aware of “The Leica Freedom Train” that saved hundreds of Jewish lives before WWII. It was a rescue effort in which Jews were smuggled out of Nazi Germany before the Holocaust by Ernst Leitz II of the Leica Camera company, and his daughter Elsie Kuehn-Leitz. It is a story that deserves to be told and retold not only for the sake of history and what we Jews owe to the Leitz family that once acted in our people’s defense, but as an argument for what we Jews owe to others who are similarly under attack and fleeing for their lives such as Ukrainians living and suffering under this cruel attack by Putin’s Russia.

There is a current disturbing debate in Israel about who in this crisis ought to be welcomed into Israel – Ukrainian Jews only or all Ukrainians seeking refuge. Since many Ukrainians have relatives in Israel who are not Jewish, one has to wonder why some Israeli Members of Knesset are refusing to permit these refugees to come into Israel as well as other refugees with no direct connection to Israelis.

I would hope that this distinction between Ukrainian Jewish refugees and Ukrainian non-Jewish refugees would be put aside during this conflict and that ALL Ukrainian refugees who wish to enter Israel will be allowed to do so, just as I would hope the United States will welcome Ukrainians to our country as a refuge. Currently, according to the following article in The New Republic, Ukrainians are being welcomed into European countries and not yet the United States. See the status of this effort here – https://newrepublic.com/article/165670/ukraine-refugee-resettlement-us-immigration

We Jews understand only too well what it means to be denied entry into pre-statehood Palestine by the British during and after World War II and during the Shoah into the United States. That anyone, Israeli or American, would deny a pursued people refuge is counter to Jewish and American values. Should the United States be asked to admit Ukrainians we ought to do so with no questions asked.

The following was written by Leica News – see link at end.

“The Leica is the pioneer 35mm camera. It is a German product – precise, minimalist, and utterly efficient.

Behind its worldwide acceptance as a creative tool was a family-owned, socially oriented firm that, during the Nazi era, acted with uncommon grace, generosity and modesty. E. Leitz Inc., designer and manufacturer of Germany’s most famous photographic product, saved its Jews.

And Ernst Leitz II, the steely-eyed Protestant patriarch who headed the closely held firm as the Holocaust loomed across Europe , acted in such a way as to earn the title, “the photography industry’s Schindler.”

As soon as Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ernst Leitz II began receiving frantic calls from Jewish associates, asking for his help in getting them and their families out of the country. As Christians, Leitz and his family were immune to Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg laws, which restricted the movement of Jews and limited their professional activities.

To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz quietly established what has become known among historians of the Holocaust as “the Leica Freedom Train,” a covert means of allowing Jews to leave Germany in the guise of Leitz employees being assigned overseas. Employees, retailers, family members, even friends of family members were “assigned” to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and the United States, Leitz’s activities intensified after the Kristallnacht of November 1938, during which synagogues and Jewish shops were burned across Germany.

Before long, German “employees” were disembarking from the ocean liner Bremen at a New York pier and making their way to the Manhattan office of Leitz Inc., where executives quickly found them jobs in the photographic industry.

Each new arrival had around his or her neck the symbol of freedom – a new Leica camera. The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out of this migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople, marketers and writers for the photographic press.

Keeping the story quiet The “Leica Freedom Train” was at its height in 1938 and early 1939, delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks. Then, with the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany closed its borders.

By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had escaped to America, thanks to the Leitzes’ efforts. How did Ernst Leitz II and his staff get away with it?

Leitz, Inc. was an internationally recognized brand that reflected credit on the newly resurgent Reich. The company produced cameras, range-finders and other optical systems for the German military. Also, the Nazi government desperately needed hard currency from abroad, and Leitz’s single biggest market for optical goods was the United States.

Even so, members of the Leitz family and firm suffered for their good works. A top executive, Alfred Turk, was jailed for working to help Jews and freed only after the payment of a large bribe.

Leitz’s daughter, Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, was imprisoned by the Gestapo after she was caught at the border, helping Jewish women cross into Switzerland . She eventually was freed but endured rough treatment in the course of questioning. She also fell under suspicion when she attempted to improve the living conditions of 700 to 800 Ukrainian slave laborers, all of them women, who had been assigned to work in the plant during the 1940s.

(After the war, Kuhn-Leitz received numerous honors for her humanitarian efforts, among them the Officier d’honneur des Palms Academic from France in 1965 and the Aristide Briand Medal from the European Academy in the 1970s.)

Why has no one told this story until now? According to the late Norman Lipton, a freelance writer and editor, the Leitz family wanted no publicity for its heroic efforts. Only after the last member of the Leitz family was dead did the “Leica Freedom Train” finally come to light.

It is now the subject of a book, “The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train,” by Frank Dabba Smith, a California-born Rabbi currently living in England.

Thank you for reading the above, and if you feel inclined as I did to pass it along to others, please do so. It only takes a few minutes.

Memories of the righteous should live on.” 

See Wikipedia entry on the Leitz family and the Freedom Train as well as the record of this humanitarian effort – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leica_Freedom_Train

Leica and the Jews (Leica Freedom Train)

Marty and me – Circa 1995

My wife Barbara and I returned late last night from San Francisco to attend a memorial service for our dear friend and my mentor, Rabbi Martin S. Weiner, who died this past week.

It was a sad return to a congregation I served so happily during my first years as a rabbi from 1979 to 1986. Marty was then a 41 year-old gentle giant standing six feet two inches, and that image of him never left me even as Barbara and I saw him last week in a farewell zoom call somewhat diminished and weakened from the cancer that had, after twenty years of living with it, suddenly spread throughout his body. Yet, Marty’s beautiful and sweet face, his characteristic humility, interest in us, and his remaining mental acuity, was all there for us to see as he whispered his final appreciation for us as his friends, and we were able to tell him how we felt about him. We had done this many times over the more than four decades of loving him, but we wanted him to know it all yet again this one last time.

Marty’s son Danny, who followed him into the rabbinate and serves with distinction as the Senior Rabbi of Temple De Hirsch Sinai in Seattle, spoke magnificently about his father as did his youngest daughter Liz and one of his six grandchildren Julie. Marty’s successor Rabbi Jessica Zimmerman Graf also spoke of the kindness and gracious nature of this extraordinary leader and mensch of a man. Jessica grew up as one of his kids in the congregation and became a rabbi as did eight other young people including Danny, perhaps a record for any rabbi in the country inspiring young people to serve the Jewish people as he did for so long as a rabbi in Israel.

The love and admiration of hundreds filled Congregation Sherith Israel’s historic and magnificent Sanctuary (built two years before the 1906 earthquake) because Marty was able to touch the hearts and minds of so many for so long. He was a rabbis’ rabbi – hundreds of rabbis called Marty their mentor (people might say I exaggerate – but they be wrong) as did so many adults and children who grew into adults who will always regard Marty as their rabbi.

Marty’s gentle but strong and clear voice, his life-long commitment to social justice and peace in Israel, his love of movies and ability to tie in Jewish themes through his favorites from Casa Blanca to Raiders of the Lost Ark, his leadership in the interfaith community of San Francisco, in the American Jewish Committee nationally, in J Street on our Executive Committee of the Rabbinic and Cantorial Cabinet, and as a past President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis were remembered fondly.

For me, I lost my first rabbinic boss, my mentor, my dearest of friends. For Barbara and me, Marty and Karen were our most important rabbinic couple role models. I cannot count the number of times when I faced difficult congregational, pastoral, and life challenges that I asked myself ‘What would Marty say and do?’ If I figured it out, I’d say and do that. If I couldn’t, I’d call him and he would respond wisely and lovingly.

I had no idea in 1979 when I first went to work as Marty’s assistant rabbi that he would come to mean so much to me as a rabbi, a man, a husband, father, and grandfather. As Danny noted in his tribute to his father, Marty mentored rabbis from their first years and, in my case, into retirement. Because my own father died when I was nine years-old, without realizing it at the time, Marty became for me a father-surrogate. No one could have a better second father figure, and my own was a wondrous man. To have two men like this in my life has been a blessing beyond any I could have hoped for.

In listening to Danny, Liz, Julie, and Jessica speak, they all touched on the essence of the man who was their father, grandfather, and rabbi. It was so familiar sitting again in that glorious sacred space recognizing that the hundreds in the room and so many more watching on YouTube across America and beyond that we were all there to honor Marty’s life and memory, but it was also so difficult to recognize that he would never grace that space with us again.

Marty loved Shakespeare ever since studying it at UC Berkeley as an undergraduate, and these words express so well how so many feel about him:

“Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, / Take him and cut him out in little stars, / And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night / And pay no worship to the garish sun.” (Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 2)

Marty was one of our g’dolei dor (great ones of our generation). And so I say of him: “Eich naflu ha-giborim – How the mighty has fallen” (2 Samuel 1:25)

Zecher tzaddik livracha – May Marty’s memory abide among us always as a blessing.

The entire Memorial Service was recorded on YouTube and can be watched here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ_Xuv-pQ7Y

This blog also appears on the Times of Israel – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/rabbi-martin-s-weiner-a-loving-tribute/

AIPAC’S DECISION TO ENDORSE AND FUND OVER 35 CANDIDATES WHO VOTED TO OVERTURN ELECTION RESULTS ON JANUARY 6TH IS A SLAP IN THE FACE FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

When Tom Dine, the former outstanding Executive Director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (1980-1993) says that AIPAC is no longer deserving of a dime of his money, every supporter of AIPAC and every congressional candidate that was endorsed by AIPAC ought to take note, follow his lead, refuse AIPAC’s endorsement, and stop supporting it.

I was once (30+ years ago) a supporter of AIPAC because of its solid record of advocacy in the United States on behalf of Israel’s security. Thirteen years ago I switched my engagement to J Street because I believe that its pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-2 states for two peoples resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the only way for Israel to remain a democracy and Jewish. I now serve as a national co-chair of J Street’s Rabbinic and Cantorial Cabinet including more than 1000 clergy.

I know that strongly identified Americans and Jews have supported AIPAC over many years because of that organization’s advocacy for Israel and its security. I have disagreed with them politically on many counts, but I have always respected my colleagues and friends who are AIPAC supporters.

However, AIPAC has stepped over the line of acceptability as an organization that allegedly supports both Israeli and American democracy. As the title of this news release from J Street indicates, AIPAC has decided to endorse and fund more than 35 candidates for Congress who voted to not certify the Biden-Harris election in the House of Representatives and thereby overturn the election – part of the Trump campaign’s insurrection against American democracy and the US Constitution.

Is it not now time for AIPAC’s long-time supporters to withdraw their support of that once venerable organization? And is it not time for those Democrats and Republicans who were also endorsed by AIPAC and who refused to follow Trump’s insurrection of American democracy to refuse AIPAC’s endorsement (see the list of endorses in the link below)?  

March 3, 2022

WASHINGTON, DC – J Street, the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans, today expressed alarm and concern that AIPAC’s new PAC has endorsed over 35 congressional candidates who egregiously undermined American democracy by voting against the certification of presidential results after insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol on January 6th.

J Street has repeatedly urged all pro-Israel PACs to take a “Democracy Pledge” to never support such anti-democratic candidates. Yet AIPAC has now announced their intention to funnel millions of dollars to these dangerous politicians.

“AIPAC’s support for these candidates endangers American democracy and undermines the true interests and values of millions of American Jews and pro-Israel Americans who they often claim to represent,” said Laura Birnbaum, J Street’s National Political Director. “Whatever their views on Israel, elected officials who threaten the very future of our country should be completely beyond the pale. We call on AIPAC to immediately end their support for these candidates – or explain what could possibly justify supporting those who effectively sided with the insurrectionists on January 6th.”

Astoundingly, more than half of the Republican candidates newly endorsed by AIPAC voted against the certification of the 2020 presidential election results. Among these endorsees are elected officials who have repeatedly sought to obstruct and deter serious scrutiny, investigation and justice for the events of January 6th and the overall attempt to overturn and subvert the results of the election.

Claims of “bipartisanship” cannot excuse support for candidates who only respect election results when their party wins. Former AIPAC executive director Tom Dine has publicly said that if AIPAC contributes “to antidemocratic people who believe the last election was a fraud and they support the January 6 insurrection – no sir, I would not give them a dime.”

J Street is pleased that the Jewish Democratic Council of America and Democratic Majority For Israel have already publicly taken the Democracy Pledge. AIPAC’s eager support for candidates who subvert our democracy runs completely counter to the views and values held by the vast majority of American Jews and pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans.

A full list of the AIPAC PAC endorsees who voted against the certification of the 2020 election results on January 6th can be found here.

You can find Rabbi Dukhovny’s message at this link – https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=642975313480836

My friend, the Senior Rabbi of the Reform movement’s Congregation HaTikvah of Kyiv, Ukraine posted this YouTube message to his colleagues and friends in the World Union for Progressive Judaism. He recorded this the basement of a Stalin era building.

If you wish to make a donation to the Reform Jewish community of Ukraine, you can do so at this link through the World Union for Progressive Judaism – https://wupj.org/give/ukraine/

Alex’s message – https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/FMfcgzGmvLPXfXNwFcZnCJrHRfRVZJGd?projector=1

Vladimir Putin and his Russian henchmen have no heart. That’s obvious as we watch their naked aggression against the Ukrainian people and their wanton murder of innocent women, men, and children.

This week Putin’s sins were compounded when his military bombed a sacred World War II memorial site at Babi Yar, a ravine outside Kyiv where on two days in late September of 1941 the Nazis marched 33,000 Jews to this site and shot them dead.

The Soviet-Russian poet Yevgeny Aleksándrovich Yevtushenko (1932-2017) published a poem called “Babi Yar” in 1961 as a protest against the former Soviet Union’s refusal to identify Babi Yar as a national Ukrainian memorial site.

I visited Babi Yar in the late 1990s and there were, at the time, two memorials at the site. The first was a national memorial for Ukrainians killed there but without mention of the murder of Kyiv’s Jewish community. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Kyiv Jewish community erected a large menorah and set it closer to the actual ravine where the shootings took place as the Jewish memorial for those 33,000 lost Jewish souls.

I first read this poem during the famed Leningrad Trials in December of 1970 when eleven Jews sought to take a small plane out of the Soviet Union but were stopped at the airport, arrested by Soviet authorities, accused and tried for high treason. On December 24, 1970 a Soviet court convicted them all. Two of the leaders were sentenced to death and the rest to years of hard labor. Only as a consequence of protest first by the international Jewish community and then by the Congress of the United States were the death penalties set aside. Eventually all those convicted were freed. The Leningrad Trials galvanized the American Jewish community in support of Soviet Jews in an effort to call the world’s attention to what Elie Wiesel called “The Jews of Silence” in his book published in 1966.

Putin’s irreverent bombing this week of the Babi Yar memorial is yet one more example of his heartlessness and disrespect for the dead. Senator John McCain put it right years ago when he said, “When I look in the eyes of Putin, I see the KGB.”

I offer below that poem that so moved me 52 years ago. Its message holds true today.

“Babi Yar” by Yevgeny Aleksándrovich Yevtushenko – Translated by Benjamin Okopnik, October, 1996

No monument stands over Babi Yar. / A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone. / I am afraid. / Today, I am as old / As the entire Jewish race itself.

I see myself an ancient Israelite. / I wander o’er the roads of ancient Egypt / And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured / And even now, I bear the marks of nails.

It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself. / The Philistines betrayed me – and now judge. / I’m in a cage. Surrounded and trapped, / I’m persecuted, spat on, slandered, and / The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills / Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.

I see myself a boy in Bialystok / Blood spills, and runs upon the floors, / The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded / And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.

I’m thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left, / In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom, / To jeers of “Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!” / My mother’s being beaten by a clerk.

O, Russia of my heart, I know that you / Are international, by inner nature. / But often those whose hands are steeped in filth / Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.

I know the kindness of my native land. / How vile, that without the slightest quiver / The antisemites have proclaimed themselves / The “Union of the Russian People!”

It seems to me that I am Anna Frank, / Transparent, as the thinnest branch in April, / And I’m in love, and have no need of phrases, / But only that we gaze into each other’s eyes. / How little one can see, or even sense! / Leaves are forbidden, so is sky, / In darkened rooms each other to embrace.

“They come!”

“No, fear not – those are sounds / Of spring itself. She’s coming soon. / Quickly, your lips!”

“They break the door!”

“No, river ice is breaking…”

Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar, / The trees look sternly, as if passing judgement. / Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand, / I feel my hair changing shade to gray.

And I myself, like one long soundless scream / Above the thousands of thousands interred, / I’m every old man executed here, / As I am every child murdered here.

No fiber of my body will forget this. / May “Internationale” thunder and ring / When, for all time, is buried and forgotten / The last of antisemites on this earth.

There is no Jewish blood that’s blood of mine, / But, hated with a passion that’s corrosive / Am I by antisemites like a Jew. / And that is why I call myself a Russian!

For those wishing to help the Jews of Ukraine in this crisis, I recommend sending contributions to the World Union for Progressive Judaism (the international Reform movement) website at https://wupj.org/give/ukraine/

This blog is also posted at the Times of Israel – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/babi-yar-by-yevgeny-aleksandrovich-yevtushenko/

As Vladimir Putin roles over Ukraine with ice in his veins, nothing in his heart, and a dark soul of a former KGB killer, here are some quotations about war that I collected over the years that speak to the moral and real-life consequences of war.

In a democracy, people will hold different views on policy (some more moral than others), but what we have been hearing from Trump, Pompeo, Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, and extreme right-wing alternative reality-makers in the Trump Republican Party is not only a reflection of Putin himself but a distortion of everything our better American angels call upon us to think, do, and be.

Today, tomorrow, and the next day are the beginnings of a great tragedy for the people of Ukraine and for the Russian soldiers ordered to do Putin’s bidding. No one will win in this war. Everyone will suffer the consequences of Putin’s lust for power and corruption of the human spirit.

I am not a pacifist. There are two legitimate reasons, in my view, for a country ever to go to war. The first is in self-defense from a direct attack, and the second is to stop a genocidal action against a group of people. Russia’s actions this week are clearly neither.

I applaud President Biden and the leaders of NATO and the European Union for unifying their response to this calumny, and I pray that the tough sanctions already put in place and those that are yet to come will deter and then stop this insanity before too many Ukrainians are killed and maimed.

The consequences of war — “He that is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.” -Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)

Hatred of war — “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity… Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. General and 34^th President of the United States(1890-1969)

Victory in war is an illusion — “No battle is ever won, he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” -William Faulkner, novelist (1897-1962)

Who are the warriors — “Once and for all / the idea of glorious victories / won by the glorious army / must be wiped out / Neither side is glorious / On either side / they’re just frightened men / messing their pants / and they all want the same thing / Not to lie under the earth / but to walk upon it / without crutches.” -Peter Weiss writer, artist, and filmmaker (1916-1982)

War is hell — “It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.” -William Tecumseh Sherman, Union General – American Civil War (1820-1891)

War and leadership — “Any leader who does not hesitate before sending young men and woman to war, doesn’t deserve to be a leader.” -Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel (1898-1978)

A short decisive war is illusion — “The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.” -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)

War and truth — “The first casualty of war is truth.” -Original author unknown

War and youth — “I hate with a murderous hatred those men who, having lived their youth, would send into war other youth, not lived, unfulfilled, to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.” -Mary Roberts Rinehart, novelist (1876-1958)

“Youth is the first victim of war – the first fruit of peace. It takes 20 years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only 20 seconds of war to destroy him.” -Boudewijn I, King of Belgium (1934-1993)

Great wars — “A great war leaves the country with three armies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.” -German proverb

This past fall, my son Daniel asked me about a box of cassette tapes that I recorded and sent to my mother, in place of letters, during the years 1973-1974 when I lived in Israel studying in my first year of rabbinic school at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. He said he would love to read them, if I would transcribe them.

My mother kept 22 cassette tapes in a small white box tucked away in a closet in her condominium. I’d forgotten completely about them until one day my brother and I prepared to move our mother to assisted living in her 95^th year some ten years ago. I brought them home and must have told Daniel about them, and he remembered.

When an adult child asks something specific of a parent, that parent ought to respond positively – I did.

So, I down-loaded a transcription App and played on my out-of-use Sony cassette tape player (I’m glad I didn’t throw it away) 19 of the tapes into my IPhone (3 tapes were damaged). I transferred the texts to my home computer and spent weeks editing what this then 23 to 24 year-old graduate student said from Ulpan Akiva in Netanya where I spent the summer of 1973 learning Hebrew, and from his dorm room at Bet HaStudent, a half-block from the President of the State of Israel’s House in the Rechavia neighborhood of Jerusalem (that dorm was converted into expensive condominiums).

As I listened to a much younger me, I was stunned by how honest and clear-thinking I was 48 years ago, how so much of what I was to become as a progressive Zionist and American Reform Rabbi was seeded in that important year in my life, and (as it turned out) in the history of the State of Israel and the United States.

Historical highlights of that year include the Watergate hearings, the outbreak of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and its aftermath, the shuttle diplomacy of US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the death of the founding patriarch of the Jewish State, David Ben Gurion, the resignation of Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir and General Moshe Dayan for failure to anticipate the simultaneous attack on Israel resulting in the devastating loss of life of 2656 Israeli soldiers and the injury of another 11,656, and the Palestinian terrorist attack out of Lebanon on the northern town of Kiryat Shemona resulting in the murder of 18 Israeli women, men and children.

In addition, I came to know well my Petach Tikvah family, Devorah and Yitzhak-Tzvi Shapira (the niece and nephew of Avraham Shapira, the founding shomer of Petach Tikvah), Rav Yosef and Sarah Rozovsky (my father’s first-cousin and a Rosh Yeshiva of a religious school), and our Jerusalem family, Tamara Pinchosovich (an attorney overseeing Knesset labor and economic legislation and Avraham Shapira’s granddaughter), Morrie and Stella Bay and their children (new olim to Israel after the 1967 Six Day War), and Rachael ‘Rae’ Rivlin (known in O Jerusalem by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre (publ. 1971) as the “hostess of Jerusalem” as well as the widow of Hebrew University Professor Yosef Yoel Rivlin and mother of the future President of the State of Israel, Reuven ‘Ruvi’ Rivlin.

I was friendly during my eight weeks of study at Ulpan Akiva in Netanya with Shulamit Katznelson (1919-1999), the founding director and daughter of Berl Katznelson (1887-1944), an architect of the emerging State of Israel who founded the state’s Labor Union, Health Care System, and other institutions of the State.

Finally, I established close relationships with many rabbinic school classmates. Though our paths diverged over the years, we continue to share a bond unlike any other friendships.

As I listened and transcribed these cassettes, I vaguely recall a few of the incidents and remember many not at all. Most memorable are the close relationships I shared then with the Shapira, Rozovsky, Pinchosovich, Rivlin, and Bay families, and with events before, during, and after the Yom Kippur War.

Not only did listening, transcribing, and editing these hour-long cassettes bring the events of those years vividly to mind, as if I were transported back in time, I’m reminded of the vagaries of memory, how very much we forget, how important are our early life-experiences in who we become and what we value and care most about. I also am reminded, yet again, how important it is for each of us to record our life stories for the sake of our children, grandchildren, and the generations to come not only so that there will be a written or oral record but so that they will understand themselves as the most recent links in the chain of their family’s history.

I’m grateful to my mother (z’l) for insisting that I send these tapes in lieu of writing letters, which she knew I wouldn’t do, and for holding onto them for so long thereby preserving for my memory one of the most consequential years in my young life.

Also posted at The Times of Israel at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-frailty-of-memory/

I have always found it false and misleading to characterize Israel as an “Apartheid State,” as Amnesty International has done in a new report. Within Israel itself, though Palestinian Arab Israelis are second class citizens whose full rights must be addressed, they have the right to vote, the right to serve in the Knesset (one Arab Muslim Party is part of the ruling government coalition), the right to serve as judges (one of the Supreme Court Judges is a Palestinian Arab), and the right to use social services including hospitals, etc.

Life for Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, however, is different and harsh, but Israel’s military administration overseeing the occupied territories does NOT look like the former South African Apartheid regime. It is something else altogether, unjust to be sure, but NOT Apartheid. To call Israel an Apartheid state is to de-legitimize Israel’s right to exist by equating it with racism at its core. Israel remains, within the Green Line, the only democratic state in the Middle East, and to suggest otherwise belies deeper anti-Israel proclivities in the accuser. This is not to say that there is no merit in the AI report. There is. Palestinian rights to a state of their own alongside Israel is the only solution that can bring justice and peace between Israel and the Palestinian people.

J Street just released our statement of protest against AI calling Israel an “Apartheid State.” As J Street has done consistently over the years, advocates for a negotiated resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in two states for two peoples living peacefully and securely side by side.

See J Street’s full statement at the link below:

“The release of Amnesty International’s new report on human rights in Israel and the territory it occupies shines another bright spotlight on the injustice of Israel’s occupation and the illegality of deepening de facto annexation of the territory it has occupied since 1967. The ongoing denial of fundamental rights and freedoms to millions of Palestinians in occupied territory runs counter to the values on which Israel was founded and undermines its security and international standing. J Street does not endorse the findings or the recommendations of the report, nor do we use the word “apartheid” to describe the situation on the ground. At the same time, we urge Israel and its friends around the world not to use issues with the report as an excuse to avoid grappling with the day-in and day-out realities of occupation and the moral and strategic catastrophe it represents for Israelis and for Palestinians.”

Statement on Amnesty International Report “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians”