Many of the young people who pass through the Jewish Enrichment Center in Lower Manhattan view it with great affection. It is often the first time they have come in contact with a Judaism that is engaging and accessible. The rabbis responsible for the center’s educational and religious programs are charismatic and approachable people who, participants say, have had a large impact on their lives.
As the official New York follow-up organization for Taglit-Birthright Israel — which sends young people on free trips to Israel and lately is trying to keep them Jewishly engaged when they return — there could hardly be a better model.
But there are also those Birthright alumni who have been turned off by the JEC, sensing that it has a hidden, religious agenda that clashes with Birthright’s declared nondenominational and pluralistic stance. Their suspicions have now been substantiated with the revelation that the JEC’s rabbis were trained at Ohr Somayach, a Jerusalem-based ultra-Orthodox yeshiva with international branches and a publicly declared goal of turning secular and nonobservant Jews into ba’alei teshuvah. The JEC, it has emerged, was launched as an outreach arm of the yeshiva.
For some Birthright alumni who spoke recently with the Forward, this confirmed what they had already surmised.
The realization for one person came when he was asked to memorize lines of Talmud and encouraged to wrap tefillin every day. For another, it was the weekend he was required to spend with a Haredi family on Long Island if he wanted one more trip to Israel. And for a few, it came only after an all-expense paid month at a Jerusalem yeshiva, where they were presented with a stark choice of abandoning their current life for a more religious one.
As the Forward reported on September 4, the JEC which has received nearly $5 million from philanthropist Michael Steinhardt since 2005, has a virtual monopoly on reaching Birthright alumni in New York and is run by Orthodox rabbis involved in kiruv, or religious outreach. What has only now become clear is the JEC’S connection to Ohr Somayach, which engages openly in a form of Jewish evangelism.
“They are ideologically ultra-Orthodox, but they would never identify themselves that way,” said Allan Nadler, a professor at Drew University who has studied the Orthodox world, referring to Ohr Somayach. “It’s the soft sell. Come for dinner, come for lunch, hang around, smoke some weed after Shabbos. But there’s always an element of deception.”
In conversations with the Forward, a handful of Birthright alumni have painted a picture of the JEC as a place where Orthodoxy is the end goal, though it is encouraged through slow, gentle steps that are often difficult to perceive.
“If they had just said, if their whole mission statement was, we’re Orthodox Jews, we’d love to present this lifestyle to you and see if it’s for you, and then did the same exact things that they are doing, that would not bother me,” said David Siegel, who was involved with the JEC for two years and went on three of the center’s follow-up trips to Israel. “But they know they can’t do that. People will get scared.”
Rebecca Sugar, Birthright Israel NEXT’s director of alumni outreach in New York, declined to comment. In a letter to the Forward in response to the September 4 article, she wrote that “NEXT, NY is inclusive regarding the various branches of Jewish expression,” and referred to the secular programming she has organized.
Michael Steinhardt also responded through his publicist that, “I stand 100% behind the work of Rebecca Sugar and her associates and I believe that Birthright NEXT New York gives representation to all views within the Jewish spectrum.”
The outreach has become a focus, especially after a report issued in March found that 44% of alumni no longer in college have not attended any Jewish program since their return from Israel. A further 39% have attended just one or two programs. Only 4% have taken part in more than four programs.
The JEC’s ties to Ohr Somayach were first noticed by David Kelsey, a blogger, on the Web site Failed Messiah. He discovered two references to the JEC on the Ohr Somayach Web site. One referred to the center as an “outreach affiliate”; the other called the JEC the “latest outreach post of Ohr Somayach’s international network.” Both references also mentioned Mordechai Mindell and Lawrence Hajioff, who attended Ohr Somayach’s Monsey, N.Y., yeshiva and are, respectively, the executive director and educational director of the JEC.
Officials of Ohr Somayach told the Forward that they had an “informal relationship around 2003” with the JEC. Tax returns for Ohr Somayach International, the organization’s Brooklyn-based office, show that donations totaling $25,000 were made to the JEC from 2002 to 2003. Presented with this information, Mindell responded in an e-mail: “The JEC has never been nor are we now an affiliate of the Ohr Sameyach organization.”
Siegel, a 33-year-old standup comic who starred in a promotional video for the center, described a slow process of being drawn into a religious life. He went on the first post-Birthright trip offered by the JEC, called Reloaded. When he returned, he got heavily involved in the center, partly as a way of earning another vacation in Israel. While the Reloaded trip cost him $600, the next 10-day program in Israel, called Legacy, was free as long as he attended several weeks of religious courses and spent two weekends celebrating the Sabbath at the home of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family on Long Island.
After that second trip to Israel, which he mostly spent studying in Jerusalem, the JEC rabbis offered Siegel an opportunity to spend a month at a yeshiva in Israel, Machon Shlomo, which would be completely subsidized. Following weeks of 10-hour study days, Siegel thought the program was interesting but knew he couldn’t go further. Some of his friends who had gone with him, he said, are still there and are now very observant.
Not everyone who attends the JEC feels nudged toward ultra-Orthodoxy. Many of the activities at the center are social and without a strong emphasis on religious practice. There are lectures from Jewish intellectuals, along with cocktail parties and an extensive adult bar and bat mitzvah program. But some of those who stay around longer, like Siegel and others, find themselves in one-on-one study sessions with the rabbis, from whom they feel pressure to become more observant.
“Each and every one of them on a person-to-person level is totally open to helping you understand life, spirituality, growth, relationships; anything you want to talk about, they’re open about it,” said another Birthright alumnus, who asked to remain anonymous. “The issue for me was eventually after spending a lot of time there, it became apparent that they did have an agenda to try and get me to incorporate Orthodox practice into my life. And that became awkward.”
After he started individual studies with a rabbi, the situation became strained. “Eventually they wanted me to start memorizing sections of Talmud even though that was not something I was interested in doing,” the anonymous alumnus said. “They wanted me to start wrapping tefillin. I didn’t want to do that, either. And instead of just saying, all right, do your own thing, they kept bringing it up and pressing the issue. It didn’t always feel as though they were willing to be totally supportive of my personal choices.”
In the end, he said, his feeling that the rabbis had ulterior motives forced him out of the JEC altogether.
Most of the young people involved with the JEC perceive no hidden agenda. They describe events and classes that take place in an open, nonjudgmental environment, devoid of any pressure. But this, too, conforms with Ohr Somayach’s methodology.
In an interview posted in 2006, Mendel Weinbach, head of Ohr Somayach yeshivas, described how outreach has helped increase the number of ba’alei teshuvahthe organization has been able to attract. “When we established Yeshivas Ohr Somayach some thirty-four years ago, our student body was made up of young people who came to tour Israel out of curiosity and were ‘picked up’ at the Wall or the Central Bus Station, etc.,” he said. “Today, such things don’t exist. We have established kiruv centers on university campuses, in communities, in many locations throughout the world and have trained hundreds of avreichim [who pursue a life of Torah study] in two-year kiruv courses to run them. This has produced many blessed products.”
Kelsey, who first discovered JEC’s ties to the ultra-Orthodox institution, was recruited to join an Ohr Somayach yeshiva 20 years ago, when he was 18. He has written on his blog and elsewhere about the successful attempts of groups like the JEC to act as a cover for Ohr Somayach while infiltrating the mainstream Jewish world.
“Mainstream organizational enabling, not just funding, is critical to their general success for recruiting in the Diaspora,” Kelsey said. “This is the only way for Haredi institutions to have substantial access in the Diaspora. In Israel, they can pick these people up at the Western Wall. In the Diaspora, they need the support of the secular Jewish community to fund and facilitate a much longer recruitment process.”
Contact Gal Beckerman at beckerman@forward.com
| From: | HonestReporting (action@honestreporting.com) |
Ha'aretz reports:
A leading Swedish newspaper reported this week that Israeli soldiers are abducting Palestinians in order to steal their organs, a claim that prompted furious condemnation and accusations of anti-Semitic blood libel from a rival publication.
"They plunder the organs of our sons," read the headline in Sweden's largest daily newspaper, the left-leaning Aftonbladet, which devoted a double spread in its cultural section to the article.
(Click here for the original article in Swedish)
The report quotes Palestinian claims that young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israel Defense Forces, and their bodies returned to the families with missing organs.
"'Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,' relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied," writes author Donald Bostrצm in his report.
Bostrצm's article makes a link to the recent exposure of an alleged crime syndicate in New Jersey. The syndicate includes several American rabbis, and one Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who faces charges of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant. ...
But the liberal Sydsvenskan - southern Sweden's major daily - had harsh criticism for the rival paper, running an opinion piece under the headline "Antisemitbladet" (a play on the name Aftonbladet).
"We have heard the story before, in one form or the other. It follows the traditional pattern of conspiracy theory: a great number of loose threads that the theorist tempts the reader to tie into a neat knot without having been provided with any proven connection whatsoever," writes leading columnist Mats Skogkהr of Sydsvenskan.
"Whispers in the dark. Anonymous sources. Rumors. That is all it takes. After all we all know what they [the Jews] are like, don't we: inhuman, hardened. Capable of anything," the opinion piece says. "Now all that remains is the defense, equally predictable: 'Anti-Semitism' No, no, just criticism of Israel."
Read full coverage of this story in Ha'aretz.
This latest blood libel joins an all too long list of false charges and accusations against Israel and the IDF and would not look out of place on a neo-Nazi website or the pages of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
While this article may have been published in Swedish, previous experience shows that even such outlandish stories take on a life of their own as translations appear on the Internet preserved for Israel's enemies to dig up in the battle to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state.
Even though credible rebuttals may appear, as was the case with the Jenin "massacre" and The Independent's "secret uranium bombs" (see HonestReporting's Big Lies interactive resource), these stories continue to fester online and, sadly, it is likely to be the case with Aftonbladet's disgraceful article.
Such a disgusting excuse for journalism is bound to create outrage. While understandable, we ask that your e-mails to Aftonbladet's Editor-in-Chief Jan Helin - jan.helin@aftonbladet.se - are as considered as possible under the circumstances and do not descend to the gutter level that this "newspaper" has sunk. Demand a retraction and an apology so that this story does not go unchallenged and unanswered.
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: CREDIBILITY CONTINUES TO DIVE
HRW's credibility has taken a pounding in recent weeks as details of fundraising in Saudi Arabia have come to light. Now, Ma'ariv has published a devastating expose of Joe Stork, the author of HRW's latest report. Stork has a long history of support for Israel's destruction and Palestinian terrorism. Noah Pollak translates the Ma'ariv piece in full, which includes the following revelation:
Stork reached his peak in a statement published by the Middle East Research and Information Project, which dealt with gathering information on the Middle East conflict, and in which Stork was a leading figure. This was a statement that included explicit support for the murder of the eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics:
"Munich and similar actions cannot create or substitute for a mass revolutionary movement," the statement said, "But we should comprehend the achievement of the Munich action…It has provided an important boost in morale among Palestinians in the camps."
Murder and terrorism, if so, are a matter of morale.
This is the man. A radical Marxist whose positions have not changed over the years.
Yet, the media continues to treat such personalities and the organizations that they represent as credible beacons of universal human rights, insulated from scrutiny and regarded as above reproach. Can HRW's credibility sink any lower? How can mainstream media outlets continue to trust any reports that HRW publishes?
Indeed, only days after making a half-hearted effort at "balance" by criticizing Hamas, HRW reverted to form with the publication of yet another anti-Israel report authored by Joe Stork. This time HRW accuses the IDF of killing 11 Palestinian civilians who were "waving white flags" during the Gaza conflict.
The serious charge of deliberately targeting non-combatants is taken apart by NGO Monitor's response while the IDF has released a video of aerial footage of a Hamas terrorist using civilians waving a white flag to try to evade IDF soldiers.
Still, due to a Georgia law that kosher food meet "Orthodox Hebrew religious rules," the rabbi from the Conservative Jewish movement does not have the authority to certify kosher restaurants.
See http://www.mercurynews.com/religion/ci_13157666 for full story and
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.
It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Little did President Lincoln realize what the future would bring in relationship to religious freedom in the 20th and 21st century in The United States of America. Previously, George Washinton, in his letter to the Jews of Rhode Island, he wrote:
TEL AVIV
IN his global tours and TV appearances, President Obama has spoken to Arabs, Muslims, Iranians, Western Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Russians and Africans. His words have stirred emotions and been well received everywhere.
But he hasn’t bothered to speak directly to Israelis.
And the effect? Six months into his presidency, Israelis find themselves increasingly suspicious of Mr. Obama. All they see is American pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze settlements, a request that’s been interpreted here as political arm-twisting meant to please the Arab street at Israel’s expense — or simply to express the president’s dislike for Mr. Netanyahu.
This would seem counterproductive, given the importance the president has placed on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If Israel is part of the problem, it’s also part of the solution. Yet so far, neither the president nor any senior administration official has given a speech or an interview aimed at an Israeli audience, beyond brief statements made at diplomatic photo ops.
The Arabs got the Cairo speech; we got silence.
This policy of ignoring Israel carries a price. Though Mr. Obama has succeeded in prodding Mr. Netanyahu to accept the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, he has failed to induce Israel to impose a freeze on settlements. In fact, he has failed even to stir debate about the merits of one: no Israeli political figure has stood up to Mr. Netanyahu and begged him to support Mr. Obama; not even the Israeli left, desperate for a new agenda, has adopted Mr. Obama as its icon.
As a result, Mr. Netanyahu enjoys a virtual domestic consensus over his rejection of the settlement freeze. Moreover, he has succeeded in portraying Mr. Obama as a shaky ally. In Mr. Netanyahu’s narrative, the president has fallen under the influence of top aides — in this case Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod — whom the prime minister has called “self-hating Jews.” Meanwhile, Mr. Netanyahu is the defender of national glory in face of unfair pressure, someone who sticks to the first commandment of Israeli culture: thou shalt never be the freier (that is, the dupe).
So far, Israelis have embraced Mr. Netanyahu’s message. A Jerusalem Post poll of Israeli Jews last month indicated that only 6 percent of those surveyed considered the Obama administration to be pro-Israel, while 50 percent said that its policies are more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli. Less scientifically: Israeli rightists have — in columns, articles and public statements — taken to calling the president by his middle name, Hussein, as proof of his pro-Arab tendencies.
What went wrong? Several explanations come to mind.
First, in the 16 rosy years of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Israelis became spoiled by unfettered presidential attention. Memories of State Department “Arabists” leading American policy in the Middle East were erased. The White House coordinated its policy with Jerusalem, and stayed out of the way when Israel embarked on controversial military offensives in Lebanon and Gaza. This approach infuriated America’s Arab and European allies, which blamed Washington for one-sidedness — something they were willing to forgive of Bill Clinton but not of George W. Bush.
Mr. Obama came to office determined to repair America’s broken alliances in Europe and the Middle East. One way to do this — to prove that he was the opposite of his predecessor — was to place some distance between Israel and himself.
Second, Mr. Obama’s quest for diplomacy has appeared to Israelis as dangerous American naïveté. The president offered a hand to the Iranians, and got nothing, merely giving them more time to advance their nuclear program. In Israeli eyes, he was humiliated by North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests. And he failed to move Arab governments to take steps to normalize relations with Israel. Conclusion: Mr. Obama is a softie, eager to please his listeners and avoid confrontation with anyone who is not Mr. Netanyahu.
Third, Mr. Obama seems to have confused American Jews with Israelis. We are close emotionally and politically, but we are different. We speak Hebrew and not English, we live in the Middle East and have separate historical narratives. Mr. Obama’s stop at Buchenwald and his strong rejection of Holocaust denial, immediately after his Cairo speech, appealed to American Jews but fell flat in Israel. Here we are taught that Zionist determination and struggle — not guilt over the Holocaust — brought Jews a homeland. Mr. Obama’s speech, which linked Israel’s existence to the Jewish tragedy, infuriated many Israelis who sensed its closeness to the narrative of enemies like Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.
Fourth, as far as most Israelis are concerned, Mr. Obama has made a mistake in focusing on a settlement freeze. For starters, mainstream Israelis rarely have anything to do with the settlements; many have no idea where they are, even when they’re a half-hour’s drive from Tel Aviv.
More important: in the past decade, repeated peace negotiations and diplomatic statements have indicated that larger, closer-to-home settlements (the “settlement blocs”) will remain in Israeli hands under any two-state solution. Why, then, insist on a total freeze everywhere? And why deny with such force — as the administration did — the existence of previous understandings between the United States and Israel over limited settlement construction? There is simply too much evidence proving that such an understanding existed. To Israelis, the claim undermined Mr. Obama’s credibility — and strengthened Mr. Netanyahu’s position.
Perhaps there are good reasons behind Mr. Obama’s Middle East policy. Perhaps the settlement freeze is in Israel’s best interest. Perhaps the president is truly committed to Israel’s long-term security and well-being. Perhaps his popularity in the Arab street is the missing ingredient of peacemaking.
But until the president talks to us, we won’t know. Next time you’re in the neighborhood, Mr. President, speak to us directly. We will surely listen.
Aluf Benn is the editor at large of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.27 Jul 2009 05:17 pm
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic Magazine
