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Email this pageIssue # 283
Issue #283 – 25 October 2007 / 13 Cheshvan 5768
IN THIS ISSUE:
SOCIAL ACTION GROUP SOUNDS ALARM OVER AFRICAN REFUGEES' WELL-BEING
REFORM RABBIS ACKNOWLEDGED IN ISRAELI PRESIDENT'S HOUSE
CANTORIAL TRAINING INSTITUTE MAKES NEWS
CANADIAN BAT MITZVAH GIRLS FIND SUCCESS WITH CENSUS PROJECT
SOCIAL ACTION GROUP SOUNDS ALARM OVER AFRICAN REFUGEES' WELL-BEING
Some 2,000 refugees who recently fled violence in several African countries are desperately in need of assistance, according to a statement from Keren B’Kavod, the joint social action project of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism and the Israel Religious Action Center. The group has been working to alleviate the urgent humanitarian crisis faced by these refugees and their families who escaped from Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea and Ivory Coast, and are now living in Israel.
“In recent months, they endured unspeakable suffering and had hoped to find true refuge in Israel,” noted Sharona Yekutiel, director of Keren B’Kavod. Yet they are forced to squat in abandoned warehouses and hangars – without proper sanitary conditions and basic supplies – because they are without the means to find housing or work. According to Yekutiel, many women and children are left to fend for themselves while their male relatives are in Israeli custody pending security checks.
“In one location we saw 80-120 people living in horribly crowded conditions,” Yekutiel said.
Keren B’Kavod (Dignity Fund) has delivered parcels of nonperishable food that it had gathered for disadvantaged people during the recent holidays (see WUPJnews #281). Now it has issued an urgent appeal for additional aid to help these refugees, who crossed into Israel from Egypt in recent months and made their way to Tel Aviv, where there is a sizeable population of foreign workers, many from Africa.
Immediate assistance - in the form of clothing, blankets, towels, infant formula, baby food, canned food and snacks, as well as volunteers and cash donations – is urgently needed. To find out how you can help, contact the World Union’s Jerusalem office at wupjis@wupj.org.il.
(Left) Keren B’Kavod volunteers packing up supplies for the African refugees. (Right) Aid packages arrive to help the refugee families.
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REFORM RABBIS ACKNOWLEDGED IN ISRAELI PRESIDENT'S HOUSE
The Reform movement received a boost last week when Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, hosted a delegation from Britain’s Reform leaders at his official residence and addressed its head as “Rabbi Bayfield.”
The last time a Reform rabbi visited the presidential residence (the rabbi was Eric Yoffie, president of North America’s Reform movement, and the president was Moshe Katzav, who later left office in disgrace following a sex scandal), Israel’s head of state refused to address Yoffie as “Rabbi.”
“If rabbis have a right to decide who is a Jew," the Haaretz newspaper reported Peres as telling the group, "the Jewish people have a right to decide who is a rabbi." The paper also said Peres was "troubled" by attempts in Israel to further restrict the definition of who is a Jew. "We are a disappearing people," he reportedly said during the visit. "There are only 14-15 million of us. We need to be more careful, generous and understanding."
Before departing for Israel for the six-day visit, Bayfield said: "The trip is both symbolic and practical. It is symbolic of the importance that we give to Israel - our highest level delegation to date. And it is practically important in terms of developing the gesher chai, the living bridge that connects us ever more strongly to Israel - and Israel to us."
Others in the delegation included the chairman of Britain’s Reform Movement, Michael Grabiner, and its treasurer, Stephen Moss, CBE. While in Israel, the group also met with Israel-based Reform rabbis, including Rabbi Uri Regev, president of the World Union, who briefed them on the situation with regard to non-Orthodox Judaism in Israel.
“While I did not expect anything different from President Shimon Peres, who has a long record of close ties and friendship with the Reform movement,” Regev noted, “it was a heartwarming experience to know he went out of his way to be hospitable to its leaders from the UK. I anticipate this will be the new spirit of the Israeli Presidency and look forward to working with President Peres in the coming months and years to strengthen Israel / Diaspora relations and to provide inspiration to the Jewish people."
In addition, the members of the UK delegation traveled to Sderot to express solidarity with the residents of the southern border town under siege from rockets fired from Gaza. While there, they were briefed by Shalom Halevi, Mayor Eli Moyal’s adviser on Diaspora issues, who told them that life in the town was "almost impossible." The delegation also met with Palestinians working toward a two-state solution.
CANTORIAL TRAINING INSTITUTE MAKES NEWS
Rabbi Walter Homolka, rector of Germany’s Abraham Geiger College, on behalf of the newly-founded Jewish Institute of Cantorial Arts, has signed a training agreement with Rabbi Michael Mamur, dean of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Under the agreement, first year students at the new institute, which will train Progressive cantors and Jewish educators, will study on HUC-JIR's Jerusalem campus. The institute, which is affiliated with Abraham Geiger College, Europe's first post-war Progressive rabbinic seminary, was established earlier this year with a five-year grant from the Breslauer families of California and Texas (see WUPJnews #274). It will also receive EU 100,000 a year in German government funding starting in 2008.
Rabbi Walter Homolka, rector of Germany's Abraham Geiger College (l),
signs the agreement on behalf of the Jewish Institute of Cantorial Arts, and
Rabbi Michael Marmur, dean of the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union
College-Jewish Institute of Religion, signs on behalf of HUC-JIR.
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CANADIAN BAT MITZVAH GIRLS FIND SUCCESS WITH CENSUS PROJECT
Last November, WUPJnews reported that Madison and Shayna Slobin, sisters from Vancouver, Canada, were planning to "re-enact the census carried out in the desert following the exodus from Egypt, as portrayed in Bamidbar,” the portion they were going to read when they were called to the Torah on May 19, 2007. Their plan was to make contact with their contemporaries around the world who would be simultaneously celebrating their own bar or bat mitzvah on the same Shabbat so that they might "support each other and learn about each other and perhaps about some of the unique and different ways we plan on celebrating our b'nai mitzvah." The item in WUPJnews included the girls' e-mail address.
The project, says Devra Slobin, the girls' mother, was an "outstanding success. The connection with [some 70] kids was overwhelming and we did indeed create a community. Your article really jump-started the project, as we received a high number of e-mails from kids and parents who saw [it]. We even got emails from adults who had been bar or bat mitzvah on [the same Shabbat] a number of years ago, wanting to share their thoughts with us."
One of the e-mails came from a rabbi in Israel, informing the girls that he would be celebrating a bar and bat mitzvah the same day for four children, one of whom was terminally ill. "At the rabbi's request," says Devra, "we wrote a speech for the child to be read at her bat mitzvah. At our own girls’ b'not mitzvah, we spoke of this gal and took a few moments collectively to pray for her. Very moving!"
During the week of May 19, the Slobin girls sent everyone a final e-mail, which included the photo of a map with flags showing where everyone lived. "It is amazing that we are located all over the world, with large distances between us, yet we can all feel so together on our big day! As some of you have written before, it is really neat to know that when we stand up on the bimah on May 19, we will know that all of us will be doing the same thing on the same day!"
"We were very proud of our daughters and how they pulled this together," says Devra Slobin, "creating their own Jewish community of teens with a common thread."
The map showing the locations of the Slobin girls' fellow bar and bat mitzvah celebrants.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
December 12-16, 2007 – URJ Biennial - Union for Reform Judaism, San Diego, California
January 29-February 3, 2008 – Annual conference of the Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America and the Caribbean (UJCL), Kingston, Jamaica
February 27-March 20, 2008 – “Shalom India: Seeing India through Jewish Eyes” tour, led by Rabbi Fred Morgan of Melbourne, Australia
March 13-16, 2008 – Biennial conference of the World Union’s European Region, Vienna, Austria
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