The JSPAN Annual Meeting 2008 on May 19th
Legislation Urging President Bush to Boycott Beijing Olympics
On April 9, Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA) introduced legislation, H. Res. 1093, calling on President Bush to not attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics unless China persuades Sudan to end the violent attacks in Darfur, allows for the full deployment of the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) and ends arm sales to Sudan. Co-sponsors for the legislation are now
being solicited.
Many Jewish and non-Jewish organizations across the United States are urging their members to write to President Bush asking him to boycott the Olympics in August if the provisions of the legislation are not addressed. China is Sudan’s major financial and political supporter. This super power has the capacity to utilize its unique leverage with the Sudanese government, so that peacekeeping forces are effectively deployed in the Darfur region by the start of the games.
Should President Bush stay away from the Beijing Olympics? JSPAN has not yet taken a position on the legislation. Let us know how you feel about this issue.
To read the full text of H. Res. 1093, click here.
Reflections on Israel at 60
Burt Siegel is director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Philadelphia and a JSPAN Board member.
My first Israel-related memory goes back to my early childhood. My family was, by most late 40’s standards, quite Zionist-oriented. I recall their frequently playing a 78 recording of Al Jolson singing Hatikvah and, on the other side of the record, a stirring, patriotic song entitled simply Israel, based on the music of the wedding classic “Chussen Kaleh Mazal Tov”.
My father regularly raised money for Israel from Bayonne, New Jersey’s many Jewish merchants. I recall going into stores and offices with him and looking at the brochures he would leave behind of good looking young Jews in shorts, holding hoes or guns while rebuilding the Jewish homeland. No Jews that I knew in Bayonne looked anything like that, I can assure you, and so this Israel must have been a magic land where Jews were tough and lean and knew how to use guns. My friends and I weren’t even allowed Red Ryder Air BB rifles advertised in the back of our comic books, because we “might shoot somebody’s eye out with it”. Later on a friend of my father’s told me that some of the money they raised had been used to purchase weapons to be used by the Haganah, and I was thrilled that he had played some small role in the creation of the state.
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High School Can Prevent the Football Coach from Continuing to Join with his Team in Organized Group Prayer
After 23 years of leading his team in organized group prayer at pregame dinners and just prior to the start of football games, Coach Marcus Borden was ordered to stop by administrators of the East Brunswick High School in New Jersey. Although he quit leading the prayers, he invited the team captains to solicit the team members to see if they wanted to continue the practice of praying in a student led effort. The coach then began to bow his head and “take a knee” with the team as a member of the team led the prayer. Again, school officials intervened, ordering him to stop. He sued, claiming that his First Amendment rights were being violated. Remarkably, a federal district court judge in Newark agreed with the coach and the school board appealed.
This week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit sided with the school board. Based on the history of the coach’s conduct, a three-judge panel ruled that the coach’s acts cross the line and constitute an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. Although the coach claimed to be engaging only in an act of team unity, “a reasonable observer would perceive his actions as endorsing religion,” whether or not that was his intent.
The opinion was written by former Pennsylvania Attorney General D. Michael Fisher and was joined by Judges Theodore McKee and Maryanne Trump Barry. Both McKee and Barry wrote separate concurring opinions. McKee suggested that he would have issued a broader ruling finding the coach’s conduct violative of the Establishment Clause regardless of his history of prior prayer with the team. Judge Barry joined Fisher’s opinion on the narrower ground.
JSPAN participated in the case by joining with the American Jewish Congress in a friend of the court brief to the Court of Appeals. The JSPAN brief, written by attorney Marc Stern, relied on a Supreme Court case decided last year holding that when public employees act pursuant to their official duties, their speech is not entitled to protection under the First Amendment.
JSPAN told the court that “over and above the compelling interest of the school in complying with the Establishment Clause …, public schools have an important interest in preserving the perception amongst students and parents that the schools and their employees are neither political nor religious partisans.”
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Would I Break the Law?
As part of the Seder ritual, we read about Shifrah and Puah, two midwives, who begin the defiance of Pharaoh by refusing to obey his orders to kill the children of the Israelites.
The Haggadah is unclear whether Shifrah and Puah were Jewish – whether they were Israelite midwives, or non-Jews who were merely midwives to the Israelites. But one thing is clear, we are to honor Shifrah and Puah for their compassion regardless of whether they were members of our tribes. We honor them for their willingness to break Pharaoh’s unjust law.
At your Seder this year, ask who among the assembled would be willing to break the laws of this country to perform a compassionate moral act?
If you need an example to start the discussion, you might start with Thomas Cardinal Mahoney, Archbishop of Los Angeles. He announced that he would be willing to break American immigration laws that he considered to be immoral. Specifically, Cardinal Mahoney was referring to a draconian enforcement-only immigration bill adopted by the United States House of Representatives. That bill would have required the deportation of all non-citizens currently in this country without legal documentation, widely believed to be many more than 12 million people. Fortunately, the bill died in the Senate.
What would you do if a law like that passed? Cardinal Mahoney proclaimed that he would provide sanctuary to individuals and families, even if he would be sent to jail for doing so. Like the old Hebrew National commercial, Cardinal Mahoney asserted that he and Catholics like him had an obligation to adhere to a higher standard.
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For We Were Strangers: A Short History
The story of Passover is a lesson in the oppression of strangers. Although Pharaoh welcomed Joseph’s father and brothers to Egypt in a time of famine and gave them space to settle in the land of Goshen, the Israelites remained strangers. They were, after all, shepherds in a land of people who worshiped sheep. Their separation thus served to minimize religious and ethnic conflict.
Over time, the separation of the Israelites from Egyptian society became a liability. It was fear that these strangers would align with Egypt’s enemies that led Pharaoh to impose slavery on them. The transition from protected guests to slaves reflects what we have seen too often in history – the tendency of all societies to oppress the stranger.
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Rally to Defeat SB 1250, “The Marriage Protection Amendment”
Opponents of Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1250, the so-called “Marriage Protection Amendment” to the Pennsylvania Constitution, will rally at the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg on Monday, May 5, 2008. A similar rally on May 14, 2006, was part of a successful effort to oppose the efforts of those who would have inscribed discrimination into the Pennsylvania Constitution under the guise of protecting our families.
JSPAN, a founding member of the Value All Families Coalition and the Faith Coalition for Pennsylvania Families, continues to oppose the relentless and unyielding efforts of those who would seek to impose their bigotry and intolerance upon all of us, and, in the process, do grievous harm and injury to Pennsylvania’s families and children. In the fight to preserve our rights and liberty, we must remain as tireless and vigilant as those who would seek to take them away.
Senate Bill 1250 would amend Article I, section 29 of the Pennsylvania Constitution to provide that, as to “Marriage,” “No union other than a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as marriage or the functional equivalent of marriage by the Commonwealth.” The bill was voted out of the state Senate Judiciary Committee on March 18th, by a vote of 10 to 4, under the condition that more public hearings would be held before it was sent to the full Senate. Next, it goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee, which will hold a public hearing that has not yet been scheduled. In order to become law, the amendment would need to be approved not only by the current Senate and General Assembly, but also by the 2009-2010 Legislature, whose members will be elected in November. If both the 2009-2010 House and Senate approve it, the bill then would have to be approved in a statewide referendum in November 2009.
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Fractured Supreme Court Decision Affirming Kentucky’s Three-Drug Lethal Injection Protocol Assures Further Litigation
On Wednesday, April 16, 2008, by a vote of 7-2, the Supreme Court upheld Kentucky’s three-drug execution procedure — one drug each to sedate, paralyze, and end life, the same method of putting criminals to death by lethal injection used by nearly all of the States with the death penalty and the federal government. Baze v. Rees, No. 07-5439.
There was, however, no majority opinion. The seven-member majority decision was supported by six separate opinions. The plurality opinion garnered just three votes. A seventh opinion announced the dissent. The full text of the decision can be found here.. A news summary and analysis of the decision can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/us/16cnd-lethal.html?ref=us (New York Times, April 16, 2008, “Litigation Assured in Wake of Decision”) and http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/us/16cnd-scotus.html?hp (New York Times, April 17, 2008, “Supreme Court Allows Lethal Injection for Execution”).
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From Purim to Passover: Law versus Power
As we get ready to sit down at our Seder this week, it’s hard to believe that we were celebrating Purim less than a month ago. The time may be short, but the psychological distance between these two holidays could not be greater.
The story of Purim is quintessentially the story of law. We read repeatedly in the Megillah about how everything was done “according to the law” – from the royal decree to kill all the Jews of the kingdom to the king’s order that Haman and his sons be hung on the gallows originally prepared for Mordechai. Even the drinking was done “according to the law.” The only act of legal defiance we see is when Mordechai refused to bow down to Haman, thus precipitating near disaster for the Jewish people. Our lives were collectively hanging by a thread, but it was the thread of law.
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Religion in Politics: A Long View
With the program held in March, JSPAN has opened up a topic that deserves further analysis and discussion. Of course, no single program and no two speakers could evaluate this knotty subject alone. But they have launched us on a serious study.
Conventionally, we in the Jewish community see the issue as one of protecting the freedom to be ourselves. We don’t wish to be told by politicians that this is a Christian country, although surely there is as much truth in that statement as in much else we hear from those on the election stump. We don’t want to hear a politician urge a position because the Bible or other religious work says so.
But those who become politicians, like the rest of us, were assigned a religion at birth; if there are atheists in electoral politics, it is difficult to identify them. Indeed many of us want to know that our elected representatives can be trusted, and we place “God-fearing” among the qualities that we think may justify our trust. How can we ask a candidate to be “God-fearing,” but not explicitly accept the binding force of any particular body of religious rules? This is one of the difficult balancing acts we place before the politicians.
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Does Religion Have Any Legitimate Role to Play in a Political Campaign?
Jeff Pasek, JSPAN president, has written the following review of JSPAN’s March 24th program.
On March 24th, members of JSPAN got to hear contrasting views of this subject from well-known figures of both major political parties, each of whom brought a personal dimension to the discussion.
Reverend William H. Gray, III, is an ordained Baptist minister who served 13 years in the United States House of Representatives, from 1978 until 1991. A Democrat, he rose to the powerful role of majority whip, the third most important post in the House, and the most powerful elected African American leader in the United States. Throughout his service in Congress, Rev. Gray also continued to hold down the post of senior pastor at the Bright Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia. He resigned from Congress to begin a 13-year career as head of the United Negro College Fund.
Also joining the program was Justice Sandra Schultz Newman, a Republican, who resigned from the bench at the beginning of 2007 to head the national appellate practice at the Cozen O’Connor law firm. In 1995, Justice Newman became the first woman elected to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the oldest court in the United States. She previously served as an elected judge on the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court.
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A Megillah for 5768
JSPAN Board member Rabbi Robert Layman has written the following Purim Political Primer for our enjoyment!
And it came to pass in the days of King Dubya, he is the same Dubya that reigned over fifty states from the distant islands of the great Western Sea to the peninsula of the frozen north, thence across the vast expanse to the great Eastern Sea, northeastward to the village founded by his ancestor Kenneth Bunkport, thence southward to the Land of the Hanging Chad, whence he was anointed, that he assembled his chieftains, advisors, and sages at Bayith Lavan.* The king addressed his courtiers in the following words: “The Lord spoke to me in a still, small voice saying, Go forth and rule over this vast land with a strong arm and an outstretched hand. Do not follow the ways of your predecessor, William the Tikvahite, called by some the man from Hope, who brought prosperity to the land and performed miracles, notably a budget surplus.
Yet, he sinned against Me.
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JSPAN Testifies to PA House Members on Redistricting
Ken Myers provided the following testimony on behalf of JSPAN to the Pennsylvania House Government Affairs Committee at a hearing on March 13. The Committee, chaired by Representative Babette Josephs, took up H.B. 81 (Rep. Leach), H.B. 84 (Rep. Tangretti), and H.B. 2047 (Rep. Curry), all proposing amendments to the Pennsylvania State Constitution designed to change our method of setting Congressional and state legislative districts.
Recounting JSPAN’s interest in the problems of redistricting in prior years, Myers urged two primary thoughts on the legislators: first, that the members of the Pennsylvania House and Senate hurt themselves through gerrymandered districts. And second, that the public does care about the redistricting process and its effect on the right to vote in general elections.
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Burt Siegel’s Remarks at the Israel Advocacy in the Age of Carter, Walt and Mearsheimer Forum
Over the last few years I sometimes find myself thinking back on a speech my friend, former Philadelphia JCRC president and JSPAN Board member Barry Ungar delivered many years ago, entitled something like “What feels good is not always what is good for us.” Barry argued that when confronted with phenomena that appear to be anti-Semitic or perhaps grossly unfair to Israel, or simply make us very anxious, we sometimes too quickly muster our considerable resources, be they financial, political or intellectual, to put the miscreant in his or her place. He observed that while doing so may make us feel good, our reaction might not always be in the Jewish community’s best long-term interests.
Certainly, Barry was not suggesting that we react in this fashion simply to satisfy the emotional needs of our community. We do so, no doubt, in the real belief that it is always important to set the record straight, certainly an admirable goal, and perhaps to punish and also to warn others of their fate if they do the same. Such a response no doubt feels very good. After all, who doesn’t want to have a sense that they effectively taught an evildoer not to tangle with our tribe or us again. But I question whether doing so is always, as an uncle of mine would frequently say, “gut fur der Yidden”—– good for the Jews.
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Finding a New Voice: American Jews and the Peace Process
reprinted with permission from the Israel Policy Forum
By Roberta Fahn Schoffman
The following is based on a presentation given by Roberta Fahn Schoffman, IPF Israel representative and CEO MindSet Media and Strategic Consulting, at the recent “An Agreement within a Year Conference” in Israel organized by the Geneva Initiative.
Waning interest in Israel, an American political wave toward moderation and change, and a Jewish leadership out of touch with its constituency—are the elements that are now setting the stage for a more proactive American Jewish engagement in the current peace process.
Operating within a nearly impossible time frame, President George Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have called for completion of negotiations and an Israeli-Palestinian agreement before the end of 2008. Such an agreement, having eluded the parties for more than forty years, would be difficult to achieve under the best of circumstances. But with each side stuck in its own internal political morass, and with ongoing violence emanating from Gaza and the ever-present threat of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the crippled process needs all the help it can get. The time has come for the American Jewish community to step up and be heard.
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