by Justin Goldstein · Monday, July 14th, 2008
The New York Times has issued a searing (ha! pun not-so-much intended) editorial on the Postville affair, titled, “The Shame of Postville, Iowa”
In my opinion, skip the editorial and go straight to the source, an eye-witness essay of the handling of the workers. It is pretty disgusting and it’s too early in the morning to share any reactions; it’s really awful enough to stand on its own, no reflection necessary. Read for yourself at your own risk of queasiness and rage.
inside the essay you’ll find joyful reports, such as:
Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10. They appeared to be uniformly no more than 5 ft. tall, mostly illiterate Guatemalan peasants with Mayan last names, some being relatives (various Tajtaj, Xicay, Sajché, Sologüí…), some in tears; others with faces of worry, fear, and embarrassment. They all spoke Spanish, a few rather laboriously. It dawned on me that, aside from their Guatemalan or Mexican nationality, which was imposed on their people after Independence, they too were Native Americans, in shackles
by Danya · Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
One of the perks of lurking around the Jewish publishing world is that sometimes you get to read stuff before it’s out. One of the best things that I’ve read recently is Ariel Sabar’s forthcoming My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq. Sabar’s father, Yona, grew up speaking Aramaic in a small town in the mountains of Northern Iraq, and left for Israel as part of the mass exodus of Iraqi Jews in the early 1950’s. Yona Sabar eventually became a prominent linguist of Neo-Aramaic; he’s a professor at UCLA now.
The book is primarily Yona’s story, and offers a valuable look at life as it was in Sabar senior’s small town of Zakho for his and his parents’ generation, and of how things were for Mizrahi Jews just after the founding of the State of Israel (hint: not easy.) More than biography, though, the author weaves together history, folklore, third-party recollections and the occasional juicy linguistic nugget to paint a compelling portrait of small-town Iraqi Jews (and their transformation from small-town Iraqi living) over the last 100 years. There’s a lot of important stuff here, and it makes for yummy and worthwhile reading.
My Father’s Paradise isn’t out yet, but you can pre-order it.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Week Four, Day Five
Hod Of Netzach
ICED, or I Can End Deportation is a game by Breakthrough a group saying of itself that it is an International Human Rights organization that uses education and popular culture to promote values of dignity, equality and justice.
From the Breakthrough website:
Breakthrough’s video game, ICED, puts you in the shoes of an immigrant to illustrate how unfair immigration laws deny due process and violate human rights. These laws affect all immigrants: legal residents, those fleeing persecution, students and undocumented people.
ICED has been featured in overwhelming amounts of press including: MTV News, Game Daily and has been covered on popular blogs including, Gothamist and The Huffington Post…
How do you play?
THE OBJECT OF THE GAME IS TO BECOME A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES
Game Play:
As an immigrant teen you are avoiding ICE officers, choosing right from wrong and answering questions on immigration. But if you answer questions incorrectly, or make poor decisions, you will be detained with no respect for your human rights.
There is also a downloadable curriculum and a discussion guide. There are also flash animations - on additional topics, like AIDS and gay marriage.
hattip to SepiaMutiny
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
Just a warning: I doubt I’ll actually succeed at this. Even just actually getting every night counted isn’t the easiest task, so actually having something to say, is going to be tough. But I’m going to give it a try, especially since there’s no requirement that I actually succeed at doing it every night… like tonight, I’m going to make up for starting late, with days 1, 2 & 3, since I couldn’t very well blog the first day on chag, and the second day was a little complicated with late sunset and all that. So, we’ll start tonight, and hopefully continue.
So: Omer night #1
Week Chesed, day chesed
Since the first day of Omer occurs on the day of a seder, I thought I write about Geraldine Brooks’ new book People of the Book. This is a wonderful book about the history - fictional in detail, although well researched in broad outlines, as she says in the afterword, ” While some of the facts are true to the haggadah’s known history, most of the plot and all of the characters are imaginary.”- of the famous Sarajevo Haggadah.
Towards todays’ omer topic chesed of chesed, the book gazes at the interrelationships - complicated, painful, loving and hating between Jews, Christians and Muslims, and also between parents and children, in all their difficulty and complexity, and acknowledging that sometimes there are no happy endings. Setting aside the fine writing, the well-drawn characters and the plot (who among us could not love a story -a mystery- about a book?) the doubling of the story makes for fine reading, and the ending is hopeful, mirroring the real history of the book, which of course includes the survival of a people, and the bravery of a Muslim librarian in saving the book of a people not his own- well, depending on how you look at it- and perhaps of a Catholic priest who saved it from destruction as well.
Day 2: Gevurah of Chesed
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by feygele · Monday, March 3rd, 2008
Who were the Romanian Jews and why did they come to Canada in such sizeable numbers at the turn of the century? How did they differ from other Jewish immigrants? A particular gastronomic orientation marked Romanian Jews as culturally unique. Join JCarrot’s Lara Rabinovitch (an NYU PhD student, who is currently a fellow of the Concordia Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies) as she traces the early Romanian Jewish immigrant experience in Canada. This talk represents a work in progress for her PhD thesis based on research conducted over the past year at Canadian Jewish Congress Archives, Libraries and Archives Canada, the Jewish Public Library, and other archives in Canada and the United States.
The lecture, “From Mamaliga to Smoked Meat: Montreal’s Romanian Jewish Immigrants, 1900-1939,” will be given Monday, March 10, from 16:30-17:30, at the Concordia Religion Department (2060 Mackay, between Sherbrooke and De Maisonneuve).
by Rooftopper Rav · Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
After years of trying to attract foreign [read: Asian] workers to Israel, the country seems to be reversing policy… at least when it comes to Asian restaurants. Today’s Ha’aretz reports that in an attempt to create more jobs for native Israelis, Israel’s government plans to decrease the number of work permits it issues to Asian chefs by about 50% next year and then stop issuing the permits altogether the following year. In response, Asian restaurants across Israel have declared a “spring roll strike,” to be followed by sushi and noodle strikes in coming weeks. Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Labor lawyer Shoshana Strauss was quoted in Ha’aretz with the brilliant line, “Everyone can make Chinese food it’s not impossible to learn.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. On a purely culinary level this is absurd. Israel’s Asian food already tends toward the awful. So awful, in fact, that senior Chinese Embassy official Xuan Chan broke with diplomatic protocol a few years ago and publicly called Israeli Chinese restaurants “disgusting.” (Thai, Chinese, and to a lesser extent Japanese food in Israel seems to mean sauteed meat and veggies or noodles with either a fluorescent pink or yellow sugary sauce dumped on top. Sushi is definitely better, but could be better.) If Asian chefs are currently cooking in Israel’s Asian restaurants– which I’m skeptical about, at least in half of the Asian places I’ve been to– they’re cooking to perceived local tastes, not to Asian standards. I’m doubtful that Israeli chefs would do better. I’m also somewhat skeptical that there are 900 (the number of Asian chef permits currently issued by the government) Israelis who’d be thrilled to jump into an Asian cooking job retraining program, should the government dream one up, which is also highly unlikely, but who knows.
Anyone else want to comment on Israeli labor policy vis-a-vis foreign and Palestinian workers?
Asian restaurants across the country went on a one-day spring roll strike on Tuesday in protest over government plans to rid kitchens of foreign chefs, and said sushi and noodles would be the next items off the menu.
The restaurants are angry at the state’s plans to purge Japanese, Chinese and Thai eateries of Asian cooks and replace them with Israelis as part of a broader program to cut the number of foreigners working in Israel.
The Ethnic Restaurant Organization said the country’s 300 Asian restaurants refused to serve spring or egg rolls - among their most popular dishes - on Tuesday, and planned a follow-up strike in two weeks for sushi and noodles.
“Today there is no egg roll and in two weeks time there will be no sushi and noodles,” Arnon Volosky, head of the organization, told Reuters.
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by BZ · Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
Wow. Estimates of the number of people who went from Gaza to Egypt today range from 200,000 to 350,000 (out of a total population of 1.5 million).
I’m probably missing something big, but I’m finding it hard to see how this isn’t a good thing for both Israel and Palestinians. The right-winger in me says that after 60 years, maybe this will finally force Egypt to take some responsibility for the situation in Gaza, and the left-winger in me says that Gaza is a shithole so who wouldn’t want to leave. We’re not talking about the West Bank, with ancestral villages and olive groves and such.
Whether one sees all Palestinians as terrorists, or whether one sees them as human beings to whom the Israeli government has a responsibility as long as they’re living in Israeli-controlled territory, one way or the other it seems like Israel is better off letting this be Egypt’s problem.
by matthue · Monday, November 26th, 2007
Editor’s Note: The following post is the first in a series meant to both present excerpts from the introduction to a new book, as well as spark discussion among Jewschool readers about the nature of Jewish tradition. We encourage you to read on to see the excerpt and share your comments.
I met some people from Parabola magazine at Book Expo a few months ago, and I was taken most by how, in the midst of a frantic net of marketing hustlers and gung-ho young buy-my-book! writers, there were a bunch of….well, congenial-looking professor types. They were eager to talk to anyone who looked curious, and incredibly friendly, but not potential used-car salesmen like everyone else around. They passed me a copy of their forthcoming volume, The Inner Journey: Views from the Jewish Tradition
, and said it would be good for me.
They were right.
That’s kind of Parabola’s approach to their subject matter. The Inner Journey series is a hallmark of this attitude: books that portray different religious experiences that are accessible, but not condescending, and function less like Cliff’s Notes and more like
Views from the Jewish Tradition is no exception. Contributions come from the expected high-profilers (Elie Wiesel on myths) as well as some canonical folks (Buber, Heschel, Rebbe Nachman) and surprising luminaries (Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s insightful and multi-layered take on the Messiah). The editor, Rabbi Jack Bemporad, is the founder of the Center for Interreligious Understanding, and has spent his life negotiating Judiasm’s relationship to other religions and cultures, from his childhood as a Holocaust survivor to his recent negotiation to relocate the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz, and his work getting the Vatican to ask forgiveness for their role in the Holocaust.
Jewschool is proud to present a series of excerpts from Rabbi Bamporad’s introduction.
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by BZ · Monday, October 15th, 2007
So the State of Israel has gone 59 1/2 years without a written constitution. You can’t blame them really — when the state was declared in 1948, there was a war going on. And then other things just kept coming up. Ok, it wasn’t just procrastination; Israel has been able to stay in business only by sweeping certain deep fissures (Jews vs. Arabs, secular vs. Orthodox) under the rug, and sitting down to come up with a constitution would have required all of these sectors of the population reaching a consensus on the character of the state. In the meantime, Israel has been making things up as it goes along, and the Knesset has passed a series of Basic Laws (English and Hebrew text) which function collectively as a sort of constitution. The Basic Laws outline the procedural rules governing each of the branches of government, and some of the more recent ones are the beginnings of a Bill of Rights. (Don’t worry, “Freedom of Occupation” isn’t what you think! It says “Every Israel national or resident has the right to engage in any occupation, profession or trade.”) The Basic Laws don’t say anything about judicial review (in which judges can use the Basic Laws to overturn other laws as unconstitutional), but hey, neither does the U.S. Constitution.
PM Ehud Olmert has announced that he wants to roll out a constitution in time for Israel’s 60th anniversary, and a Knesset committee is hard at work, led by MK Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson. A draft of the preamble has been released to the press — here’s the English and Hebrew text (both with commentary from Ha’aretz).
It looks like it’s really not going to be easy to come up with something that everyone will agree on. The current draft says “The State of Israel is a Jewish and democratic state”, but there are some who will take issue with the “Jewish” part (the Arab parties are boycotting the committee meetings), and others who will take issue with the “democratic” part (the haredi parties are opposing provisions that would guarantee equal rights insofar as this conflicts with their understanding of Jewish law, and separation of church and state seems to be off the table), and still others who will take issue with the “is”. (I place myself in the latter camp, seeing “Jewish and democratic” as an aspiration, but not an accurate description of the status quo, and not attainable without a change in the status of the territories.)
A significant provision of this draft says “A Jew who immigrated to Israel by virtue of the Law of Return shall be eligible for Israeli citizenship in accordance with the terms and timetable determined by law.” This opens the door for a change in the current law, in which Israeli citizenship is awarded immediately upon arrival. Note also that “Jew” is not defined (the committee wasn’t interested in waiting another 60 years).
Keep watching over the next several months to see how these and many other issues are addressed, and start placing your bets on when (or whether) a final text will be ready for ratification.
by Josh Frankel · Sunday, October 14th, 2007
There’s a new organization out there and it’s called Uri L’Tzedek, Awaken to Justice. Started by three YCT students, Aaron Finkelstein, Mike Schultz, and Shmuly Yanklowitz along with the generous support of a Herbert Lieberman Award this new organization aims to inspire the Orthodox community to take a more profound and active role with regards to social justice. Tomorrow night, Uri L’Tzedek will be hosting the first of what it hopes will be a series of batei midrash dedicated to issues of social concern, and this one will be focused on immigration.
What: Tzedek Beit Midrash
When: October 15, 7:30 – 9:00 PM
Where: Mount Sinai Jewish Center, 135 Bennet Ave (corner of 187th St), NY, NY
For more information, contact Aaron Finkelstein
by Rooftopper Rav · Monday, September 17th, 2007
From Rabbi Jill Jacobs of Jewish Funds for Justice and jspot:
On Sukkot, many of us invite ushpizin — honored guests, both living and dead — into our sukkah. During this period of vicious anti-immigrant rhetoric and raids, too often immigrants are viewed with suspicion rather than treated like guests to be honored.
We hope that you will join with individuals and institutions across the United States in extending a welcome to the immigrants who care for our children and aging relatives, work in our synagogues and schools, and add to the cultural and economic life of our communities. On Sukkot, when we remember the experience of being gerim — sojourners without a permanent home — we commit ourselves to helping others to find permanent homes for their own families.
To help us build sukkot that demonstrate our desire to welcome immigrant communities, the Jewish Task force for Comprehensive Immigration Reform has created a special poster. We hope that you will place this poster in your personal or institutional sukkot as a sign of your commitment to making America a safe place for immigrants.
This poster is available for purchase at www.cafepress.com/jewishjustice. Three sizes are available, in prices ranging from $6 to $18. Order soon to ensure delivery before the holiday begins next week. Click here to read the poster’s text.
For more information about immigration and Jewish perspectives on immigration, please visit our online resource center . There, you will find immigration fact sheets, time lines, text studies and divrei torah.
Best wishes for a wonderful and meaningful Sukkot.
Chag Sameach!
Rabbi Jill Jacobs
(on behalf of) More »
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Wednesday, September 5th, 2007
Consumerist reports that,
The annual Islamic Society of North America convention, which was held this past weekend in Illinois, is the largest on the continent—this year approximately 40,000 people attended to take part in panel discussions and seminars. It’s also a bastion of shopping stalls offering every Muslim product imaginable, which leads the UK’s Guardian newspaper to wonder whether it has become “more about shopping than spirituality.”
They quote the Guardian article giving some examples of the necessities of modern American Islamic life: a digital Qur’an audio player, festive Ramadan lights, a pre-packed funeral kit, halal jerky and a mobile phone application that provides daily prayer times for more than 12,000 cities worldwide. Don’t I have the same application on my Treo?
All I have to say is, that our Muslim fellow citizens are now officially, without a doubt, exactly like every other American. So, the next time there’s some rumbling from the trailer parks about the Muslims amongst us, let’s just let them know that the Borg of American consumer society has won.
Welcome, brothers and sisters.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, June 4th, 2007
There is a story told about Rabbi Israel Lipkin of Salant, better known as Rabbi Israel Salanter. One day he was washing his hands before a meal, when his guests noticed that he was not immersing his hands in the water in the way preferred by Jewish law. His guests asked him why he was using so little water in his washing.
He answered, “I did not draw the water for washing myself. My servant, that peasant girl there, must go out to the well and break the ice, hauling back the heavy pails of water on her shoulders. The more water I use, the more work there is for her. I do not want my piety to rest on the shoulders of her suffering.”
Rabbi Salanter, founder of the mussar movement, used domestic labor in his home, as do many of us. And yet unlike many of us, he was able to see his servant as more than a means for him to carry out his own desires, but as a person whose labor contributed to the household, and whose sufferings must be considered.
I wonder what percent of the Jewish community in the United States make use of domestic workers? I would think quite a few - certainly enough so that a major Jewish magazine ran an -admittedly appalling- issue on Jewish girls and their African American nannies. But the truthis these days, it is difficult to manage a middle class- that is to say, two career- household without some assistance.
Certainly there is nothing shameful in either being or hiring domestic labor.
What is shameful, rather, is how domestic workers continually fall off the radar screen when we talk about social policy. Domestic workers have been excluded from most federal and state labor laws, including the National Labor Relations Act. To be clear, they are unable to organize for safe working conditions, decent pay, and the things that “professionals” take for granted, but are out of reach for so many American workers.
Partially, this is a result of the fact that domestic workers are largely women. In our still patriarchal society, the work that women do still often fails to register as work, let alone as meaningful or important - and is remunerated in accordance with such attitudes. It is to most men, and many women, simply the backdrop against which the world revolves - nevermind that without someone doing this work, their own lives would grind to a halt, and their work would be out of reach while they had to deal with the necessities of daily home life. “Women’s work” has been largely invisible since the industrial revolution.
There is, of course, another factor in the invisibility of domestic labor. Many domestic workers are not just women, but are immigrants as well -Kapow! double whammy! And Jews historically were part of several waves of immigration in which we were the bottom of that ladder, and we were part of the labor movements that changed America, giving us safer working conditions, decent wages - and a chance for our children.
Judaism is explicit that there is one law for everyone - what is fair law for Jews is what we should also be dealing out to those among us who are not Jews. In fact, the talmud states that one who acquires for himself a servant, acquires a master -
the tosafot clarify this point in the talmud (Kiddushin 20a), saying: There is a problem - why ‘a master?’ It is sufficient for him to be like his master. One can say it is like in the talmud yerushalmi that sometimes the master has only one pillow. If he sleeps on it himself, the master has not fulfilled ‘he is happy with you.’ (Deut 15:16) If he does not sleep on it, is he not going to hand it to his servant? This is a great cruelty. Therefore he needs to hand it to his servant and the servant is a master to himself.
The Torah classifies workers with those who are the most vulnerable in society: the widow, the orphan… these are classes protected by God, Who, when they cry out, takes vengeance for them, and for whom God lays responsibilty at our doorstep; Jewish law spells out in great detail what the Jewish obligation to the worker is - and it is extensive.
The famously cranky Kotsker rebbe also has something to say about washing hands: he commented on the talmud, tractate Eruvin (21b), “When Solomon ordained the laws of ‘eruv and the washing of hands, a bat kol (heavenly voice) proclaimed: My son, if your heart will be wise, my heart will rejoice, also mine (Proverbs 23:15); and furthermore it says in scripture: My son, be wise, and make my heart glad, that I may answer him that taunts me (Prov. 27:2).
The Kotsker commented: King Solomon instituted many other practices as well; what makes these two special?
The answer lies in their connection. The Hebrew ‘eruv, is from the root meaning ‘to include,’ ‘to be involved.’ washing the hands symbolizes holiness; separation from the mundane. This is the great wisdom beneath this concept: to be involved and yet to maintain clean hands - that is indeed laudable.” (trans. Rabbi Ephraim, And Nothing But The Truth: According To The Rebbe of Kotsk)
Even the salanter rebbe, the leader of the mussar movement, had domestic laborers in his household; but he saw them. He treated them well, and he made sure that they were recognized as humansdeserving of fair treatment. Today, many of us in the Jewish community are wealthy enough to have help in our homes -we must be careful to be sure that we honor the people who help our lives run smoothly- as we honor ourselves; to ensure that they are able to make a wage they can live on, and in safe working conditions.
Support the Domestic Workers Union (DWU) and the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights.
In Washington, D.C., join JUFJ, and work with them for Domestic Workers rights.
In New York, go to the town hall meeting to see Saltyfemme’s post and work for the bill:
Thursday, 6/7, 6:30pm
Location: Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South
To RSVP and find out more, contact: danielle {at} jfrej(.)org, 212-647-8966 ext. 11
Everywhere else, raise a ruckus and ask why your state hasn’t passed a bill like this yet!
by Kung Fu Jew · Friday, May 25th, 2007
Bodies — legal and illegal — is the theme of the latest issue of New Voices magazine, the only national magazine by and for Jewish college students.
This month’s features look at the endangered state of women’s health at Stern College of Yeshiva University and the story of outlaw Jews involved in the Jewish mob. Continue reading to learn about Harvard students starving for workers’ better wages, obscure Jewish teachings on fingernail hygiene, a sex-panic in 1920s Boston, and a handful of other topics.
Also, a big welcome to Liz Alpern and Joshua Nathan-Kazis as the incoming director and editor for 2007 - 2009. Kudos to Ilana Sichel and Sarah Braunstein as they conclude two years at the Jewish Student Press Service — the magazine looks more beautiful than it ever did, covers the edgy news that Jewish students want to read, and the organization has once again survived through another debacle of speaking truth to power (read all about it in The Nation).
New Voices is free free free — subscribe here. Under two years out of university? Then become a contributor here. Want your synagogue’s students to receive it for free, too? Rock on.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, May 13th, 2007
Last week, on May 7th, a broad spectrum of Evangelical Christians launched a notional campaign for Comprehensive Immigration Reform in order to mobilize churches and faith groups to pressure political leaders nationally and in five targeted states: Florida, Arizona, Kansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.. Among the organizers are the ubiquitous Jim Wallis, (Founder, Sojourners), Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, Marcos Witt, Pastor of Lakewood Church, Rev. Dan Soliday, and Rev. Derrick Harkins, Pastor. Their statement and signatories can be seen here. It is unsurprising to see Wallis, who is attempting to wrestle Evangelical Christianity away from its current obsessions back to it roots among the poor, although it is surprising to me that this hasn’t spread like wildfire, given the growing number of Evangelicals who are themselves immigrants, and the spread of Evangelical Christianity in Latin America.
I hope to see this topic take wings generally among the American public. I hopethat there is at least increasing awareness that this is not a topic that Jews can afford to ignore. Our history, of course, should shame us into being involved - we are not so far from those ancestors who came here with nothing and worked themselves into early graves to see us join the ranks of the middle class or better. We should certainly be ashamed not to assist those who follow us to receive the same benefits that continue to advance us.
There are signs that we have over the past few years just a barely bit begun to be aware once again, of our own history, and to honor it:
Just this past week, the Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, at its annual convention, voted to pass a resolution (which I include here only because I can’t seem to find it online -scroll to bottom); way back in 2005, The Conservative Movement’s synagogue body (USCJ) passed a resolution suporting the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society’s (HIAS) “Interfaith Statement in Support of Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” IN 2006, HIAS produced another letter, which was signed by, among others: Rabbi Abba Cohen of Agudath Israel of America, Steve Gutow of Jewish Council for Public Affairs, several prominent individuals of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, Rabbinical Assembly and USCJ rabbis, Rabbi David Saperstein of Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Nathan Diament of Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.
What I have been unable to find is a recent set of resoutions that really has everyone participating: Where is exactly the broad spectrum of Orthodox organizations participating? If the Reconstructionist federation has passed a resolution on tihs, they have made it difficult to find. I realize that all of us can’t get along on many things (and if we did, we would be sure not to need any resolutions, as yamei hamashiach would surely be following directly) but immigration reform seems ot be a bit of a no-brainer. HIAS got a reasonable number of the usual suspects, but perhaps we could do better? How about it folks - surely we can do as well as the Evangelicals
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by Mobius · Sunday, February 25th, 2007
The recent discovery that the family of Anne Frank had unsuccessfully attempted to obtain an American visa before being captured by the Nazis shines light on the failure of the United States to do enough to save Jews from the Holocaust. In reaction to the news, Rep. Steve Israel has reintroduced a bill to make the child martyr an honorary American citizen.
“The best way we can honor Anne Frank in death is to give her what her father sought for her in life,†said Israel, a New York Democrat, in a statement last week. “The news that Anne Frank’s family sought to flee to the United States makes it clearer than ever that we should bestow honorary citizenship upon Anne Frank.â€
We respectfully disagree: The best way to honor Anne Frank’s memory — and to demonstrate that America has learned a lesson from its past mistakes — would be for the Bush administration to take comprehensive steps to address the needs of the mounting numbers of Iraqi refugees.
Read on…
