JEWISH ETHNOCENTRISM,
RACISM, AND RESISTANCE
TO ASSIMILATION

Favorite Son. The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. June 15, 2001
"It was a proud moment for Sam Kermanian when his West Hollywood-based organization, the Iranian-American Jewish Federation (IAJF), welcomed Israeli president Moshe Katzav last week. ... An increasingly succesful sector in the community, Persian Jews are facing challenges familiar to previous generations of Jewish immigramts; among them, dilution of traditional values and assimilation. 'There is no question there is an influence of materialism,' Kermanian said. 'Some of the old values are still holding the community together, but, obviously, this is something that will not last forever. We know that within a generation or two, we will assimilate into a larger landscape. Our goal is to make sure that we assimilate into the American Jewish community rather than the secular American landscape.' Kermanian believes that American Jewish strategies to counter escalating rates of intermarriage and divorce, such as education and programs in Israel, are just beginning to penetrate the close-knit Persian community. 'We’re not waiting for assimilation to happen before we try to correct [these lapses],' he said."

A Gentile and an Outcast. New Statesman, August 14, 1998
"I'm horrified by the attitude of so many Jews towards intermarriage. It's not just in Israel. You come across the same thing in England. Yes, my wife is Jewish. And it follows that a number of my relations are Jewish, too. In fact, coming from a small family and having married into an enormous one, I find that the vast majority of my relations are Jewish ... In the wider Jewish community, sad to relate, gentiles are by no means as welcome as spouses as I have been. The current rate of intermarriage among Anglo-Jews is around 45 per cent. But when this highly contentious subject arises, we outsiders frequently find ourselves disregarded. The focus is never on the people who 'marry in,' but always on Jews marrying out ... There's no need for me to convert. That's the magic of being Jewish: you're born that way, even if you never set foot in a synagogue. If I have children, they'll be Jewish by virtue of having a Jewish mother. They, too, will be entitled to be stoned by the ultra-orthodox in Mea She'arim. I may never become Jewish myself, but my family as a whole will at least be Jewish."

My Sister is Dating a Goy, Jewsweek, Issue 11, 2001
"Out of the blue one day, my sister happily announced to me that she was seeing someone and that this someone was not Jewish. She studied my face for a reaction, but I don’t think the one she got was what was expected. At a time when I was still able to approach the subject without getting yelled at or receiving the silent treatment from her, she had told me that she would never marry someone who is not Jewish ... These were some of the questions that I pondered as I tried to figure out what I could do to influence the situation. Talking to her wasn’t doing any good, and eventually my mother felt that we had discussed all there was to discuss. What would be the point in constantly rehashing it? So, little by little, we stopped communicating about the relationship to the point where it was rarely talked about at all. But it seemed to me that saying nothing merely had the effect of making it easy for my sister to keep seeing him. And while she did, the rest of us more or less lived with it, every now and then having to dodge questions from relatives who asked if my sister was seeing anybody ... Don’t get me wrong, I love my sister very much, but her relationship with a non-Jewish guy did cause a great deal of strain upon our family. Until this point, my mother had always believed that, of the two of us, it was my sister who would never even consider interdating because she had attended and worked at Jewish camps all her life, surrounding herself with Jewish people and practices."

Lastman Slur Hurts Games Bid.
National Post. June 21, 2001
"An 'ignorant, racist' joke by Toronto's [Jewish] Mayor may have sunk the city's bid for the 2008 Olympics, Canadian politicians and community groups say. Before leaving on a goodwill visit to Kenya this month to promote the city's quest for the Summer Games, Mel Lastman spoke to a freelance journalist about the trip. 'What the hell do I want to go to a place like Mombasa?' Mr. Lastman asked. 'Snakes scare the hell out of me. I'm scared about going there, but the wife is really nervous,' he said. 'I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me.' The remarks met universal condemnation yesterday."

Gershon Explains His Racist Remarks to Knesset Panel.
Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], July 4, 2001
"Maccabi Tel Aviv's outgoing [professional] basketball coach, Pini Gershon, yesterday offered a full explanation to the Knesset committee for prevention of violence in sport, following the publication this week of racist remarks that he had made several months ago ... . Yedioth Ahronoth's Web site, Y-Net, published a report on Sunday in which Gershon is quoted as telling a closed forum of senior IDF [Israeli military] officers that 'even among blacks there are different colors. There is dark black, and there is mocha. The mocha type are more clever, and the darker color usually come from the street.' The report said that the often overly-vivacious Gershon drew laughter from his listeners. He then continued unfazed: 'I am not joking. You can see the standing of those with a bit more mixture in their color, such as Andrew Kennedy. You can see his personality. He will check you out, he is clever. The other (darker) blacks are stupid. They will do whatever you tell them, like slaves.' Gershon told the Knesset committee that the words were uttered last September and that none of the officers present made any comment to him about his remarks. 'They were happy, we spoke jovially. I spoke about all the players and none of them criticized me,' he said yesterday."

Some IDF Officers Asked for Copies of Gershon's Speech.
Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], July 8, 2001
"Basketball coach Pini Gershon's speech in which he referred to black basketball players as having a slave mentality and the color of their skin as an indicator of their intelligence, so impressed some of the officers who heard it last November that they asked for copies of the videotape of the lecture. Even after the scandal broke out, many of the reserve officers, who were in the course for brigade commanders, don't understand why Gershon's racist remarks caused a scandal. One said 'Gershon's comments were taken as a colorful expression, as humor. We didn't think of it as racist. After all, he didn't incite us against blacks, but just gave an extreme example to make his speech tangible.' The officer called Gershon's speech 'brilliant. He gave a professional talk about leadership and the difficulty of turning a group of very different people, with huge egos, into a winning team. That's part of what we face.' 'I consider myself an enlightened person,' said another of the officers. 'But I have to admit that I didn't fall off my chair when he said what he did. We all hear things like that here.' According to the officers, a divisional commander, Brig. Gen. Yoav Gallant, recently lectured in the U.S. on the relationship between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and used the analogy of a dog and its master. Arabs in the lecture complained. 'It all depends on what is said and the context,' said one of the officers."

Jewish Groups Ready for Racism Parley. Jerusalem Post, July 6, 2001
"Jewish organizations from around the world are setting up operations in Washington and Geneva to spearhead lobbying efforts to change the tone of virulent anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic draft resolutions to be considered at a major UN conference on racism in Durban, South Africa at the end of August. This was one of the operative decisions that emerged from an international 'emergency' meeting of Jewish leaders held in London this week to discuss how to combat these proposals and plan for the Durban conference .... Israel has become - for some of this community - nothing less then the antichrist. [Irwin] Cotler said that a situation is developing where human rights is the new religion, and Israel is the enemy of that religion in every human rights sphere - whether in dealing with labor, women's or children's issue ... [Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister] Melchior said that the proposals being discussed now are far worse than the UN's Zionism is racism declaration of the 1970s. These proposals aim not only to delegitimize the state of Israel through equations of Zionism with racism, racial superiority, and the 'ethnic cleansing of the Arab population in historic Palestine,' but, he said, they also aim to delegitimize Jewish death and suffering. This was done through repeated attempts by Arab and Asian delegates at the three previous preparatory meetings to replace all references to 'The Holocaust' with 'holocausts.'"

Movie Targets. Arabs Are the Latest People to Suffer the Stereotypes of Hollywood -- and Nowhere More So Than in William Friedkin's New Film.
The Independent [Great Britain], July 30, 2000
"The Arab nations - and the Islamic world in general - have become the new stock enemy, a powerful and unreasoning force in True Lies (1994), Executive Decision (1995), GI Jane (1997) and The Siege (1998) - in which Bruce Willis rounded up Arab Americans in an attempt to stop a Hezbollah-type terrorist group blowing up New York. Even The Insider (1999) - a film about corruption in the tobacco industry, for heaven's sake - tacked on a Syrian prologue in which Al Pacino took on a pack of mad-ish mullahs. And Rules of Engagement? 'This film is absolutely off the scale,' says Hussein Ibish, communications director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a Washington-based pressure group. 'I've never seen anything quite so vile. I felt like I was being physically beaten, which is a reaction I've never had encountering a work of art. It was mind-bogglingly vicious. I'm amazed that a major American entertainment company would actually release such a thing.' He shouldn't be too amazed: the film took $15 million on its opening weekend, a fact which doubtless pleased the chair of the Paramount Pictures' Motion Picture Group, Sherry Lansing - who just happens to be married to William Friedkin [the director of Rules of Engagement. Both Friedkin and Lansing are Jewish].

All the Ironies Bring Germany to Reconsider 'Who's a Jew.'
Haaretz [Israeli newspaper[, June 27, 2001
"Here is ironic historical twist. Before the rise of the Nazis, German Jews regarded with scorn the 'Eastern Jews' who arrived from Poland and Russia and who brought with them traditional Jewish values, but not 'Western' (that is, German) values. Now German Jewry's leaders are demanding that the new 'Eastern Jews' from the former Soviet Union must be 'authentic Jews,' - in other words, that they have a knowledge of (even if they do not observe) Jewish traditions. Two weeks ago, Paul Spiegel, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany (CCJG), warned that many non-Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were exploiting the special regulations on Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union in order to obtain permanent resident status in the Federal Republic. Spiegel urged the federal government to undertake measures against immigrants posing as Jews simply to enter Germany."

A People Apart. Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], June 9, 2001
"In addition to being immigrants [to Israel] from Russia, [Tatiano and Viktor Madbaneko's] Jewishness is 'in doubt' and they are forced into hopeless shadowboxing with a society that is practiced in 'hating gentiles.' They so much want to find a way to the heart of this society, with all its prejudices."

College Bars Non-Jews from Education Studies.
Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], July 16, 2001
"Druze residents of the Golan Heights who have tried to register young women to the Ohalo College of Education and Sports in Katzrin are angry because it refuses to accept the students on the grounds that non-Jews are not allowed to study kindergarten and junior school education at the college. The only studies open to non-Jews at the college are courses in physical education, they say. In an interview with Ha'aretz, Hagit Harel, the head of student administration at Ohalo, confirmed that, of the 550 students at the college, 30 percent were non-Jews and none were studying kindergarten or junior school education. Harel said the policy was based on an Education Ministry directive which told the college that non-Jewish students who wanted to take such courses had to do so at the Arab College in Haifa or in a special course for Arab teachers at Oranim College. 'The Arab College in Haifa does not offer a course in physical education and therefore we are obliged to accept the non-Jewish students for this path of studies,' Harel said."

Rabbi Calls for Annihilation of Arabs, BBC, April 10, 2001
"The spiritual leader of Israel's ultra-orthodox Shas party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, has provoked outrage with a sermon calling for the annihilation of Arabs. 'It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable,' he was quoted as saying in a sermon delivered on Monday to mark the Jewish festival of Passover. ['The Lord shall return the Arabs' deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them.'] Rabbi Yosef is one of the most powerful religious figures in Israel, He is known for his outspoken comments and has in the past referred to the Arabs as 'vipers.' Through his influence over Shas, Israel's third largest political party, he is also a significant political figure."

Shas Leader Denies 'Annihilate Arabs' Claim. Totally Jewish, April 10, 2001
"The controversial spiritual leader of Israeli ultra-Orthodox political party Shas has claimed that his Passover sermon, in which he said that Arabs should be annihilated, was misinterpreted. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a former Chief Rabbi of Israel's Sephardi Jews and one of the most influential religious figures in Israel, said in his pre-Pesach speech: 'It is forbidden to be merciful to Arabs. You must send missiles to them and, with relish, annihilate them. They are evil and damnable. May the Holy Name visit retribution on the heads of the Arabs and cause their seed to be lost.' However, Yosef's aides moved quickly to clarify the remarks after the words sparked public outrage in both Jewish and Arab quarters."

Birthright Israel Gives American Jewish Youth Largest, Most Meaningful Hanukah Gift Ever. PR Newswire [at: findarticles.com], November 22, 1999
"Birthright Israel announced today that arrangements have been finalized for the largest and most extensive philanthropic outreach program ever targeting Jewish youth. This year's inaugural program will take 5,000 North American Jewish students to visit the Jewish homeland for free. Scheduled to take place over the turn of the new millennium, the inaugural ten-day trips are being funded by a planned $210 million in contributions over five years from major philanthropists, the Government of Israel, and Jewish communities worldwide ... At the start of the 21st century, Judaism's adversity comes from within, as assimilation threatens Jewish communities in North America and around the world. Birthright Israel aims to reinvigorate and revitalize American Jewish youth's commitment to Judaism by providing Jewish students (the majority of whom are marginally affiliated Jews) with a profound and lasting experience in Israel. Statistics have shown that Jewish youth who visit Israel at a young age are more likely to retain ties to the Jewish community."

All We Did for Them. The Boston Book Review.
"I later learned that this image of Jews as defenders of the rights of all downtrodden had been carefully cultivated .... The idea that Jewish and liberal American values and interests are perfectly harmonious is a vast and self-serving oversimplification ... Fighting for civil rights and liberties also advanced the interests of the Jewish community as a whole in American society. Bundling anti-semitism with racism allowed Jewish leaders to bring the moral gravitas of African-American suffering to bear on issues of particular relevance to Jews. Though Jews were excluded from some neighborhoods and denied some jobs, the discrimination against Jews was--at least by the mid-1950s--subtle and intermittent enough as to make it difficult to rally politicians to legislate against it and district attorneys to prosecute it. Fighting the far more blatant discrimination against African-Americans was a way to fight Jewish battles by proxy and in extremis. It was thus a way to remove social and economic barriers faced by Jews, without appearing merely self-serving. This accounts for why Jewish civil liberties organization hewed close to issues that were in principle relevant to Jews--free access of 'minorities' to jobs, housing, social clubs and organizations--while they steered away from the sorts of economic restructuring that might greatly benefit African-Americans but offer no gains for Jews."

Simpson's Contemporary Quotations, 1988. bartleby.com
"I was born Jewish and so I remain, even if that's unacceptable for many ... For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim. That's my hope and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it." -- Jean Marie Cardinal Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris. -AND- Jews and Christians Together, by Jean Marie Cardinal Lustiger. 1998 Nostra Aetate Awards and Lecture. Lustiger: "Following the example of the European nations and thanks to their participation in the dramatic evolution of civilization and culture, [Jews] have managed to create the State of Israel by picking up the standards of a particular national identity. They have thus radically renewed the question of the Jewish identity, which is now torn between two poles: on the one hand, the pole of consecrated life whose only true home is given by God at the end of times; and on the other hand, the pole of the secular existence of a people asserting its identity, its language, at long last reconstituted, its ambitions, and its national strength. With Israel the Jewish people has reintegrated the common history of the nations, as a new reference and as a mystery."

Putting Israel First. Sobran's. November 2, 2000
"That is, all New York candidates assume, as a practical matter, the truth of the 'canard of dual loyalty' — that Jewish voters care as much about Israeli interests as American interests. More precisely, they assume that Jews put Israeli interests first. American interests don’t even come up for discussion. Nobody asks whether it’s good for Americans for their government to support a Jewish state, even when that alliance provokes worldwide Muslim antagonism against this country, as witness the bombing of the USS Cole ... American politicians, including Al Gore and George W. Bush, pander shamelessly to the powerful Israel First lobby. In fact such pandering has become normalized, because that lobby wields both the carrot of money and the stick of stigma. All politicians remember the fate of Senator Charles Percy of Illinois and Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas, whose long careers ended when they irritated the pro-Israel lobby. That lobby intimidates even journalists, who fear for their careers if they criticize Israel too bluntly."

Mike in Religion Pitch. New York Daily News, August 17, 2001
"[New York] mayoral candidate Michael Bloomberg has mailed glossy booklets to New York households attesting to his Jewish faith and generosity to Jewish causes — an ad his opponent attacked as divisive politics. The mailing, which arrived at homes this week, tells the story of a student who 'broke down religious barriers' by becoming the first Jew admitted to his college fraternity, then went on to found a media empire. It describes the Republican billionaire as 'one of the Jewish community's most dedicated volunteers and most generous donors,' listing organizations he supports, including Hadassah [the Zionist Women's organization], the American Jewish Congress and the Hebrew Home for the Aged — under the heading 'Protecting Our Community' ... Former CUNY board chairman Herman Badillo, Bloomberg's rival in the September primary, feels 'this type of an appeal causes divisions,' said his spokesman, James Vlasto. Badillo 'doesn't feel that is appropriate in a political campaign in a city as diverse as New York,' Vlasto said. 'Everybody is proud of their heritage. Bloomberg is entitled to do anything he wants. But this is something we would not do.' Badillo, who was born in Puerto Rico, 'knows full well the Hispanic community would resent such an appeal.'"

Shiksa. The American Heritage Dictionary (at bartlebycom.)
"NOUN: Offensive. [A Yiddish term] used as a disparaging term for a non-Jewish girl or woman."

What Would a Jewish Veep Say About Intermarriage?, by Philip Weiss,
New York Observer, August 20, 2000
"Talk of Senators Joe Lieberman or Dianne Feinstein being Al Gore’s running mate has raised the possibility of, at long last, a Jewish president. One issue is religious observance. Senator Lieberman is Orthodox and doesn’t work on Saturdays. He has reassured people that the Torah commands one to do one’s duties. In a crisis, he’d be there. That seems like a no-brainer to me. The more interesting question is intermarriage. We live in times of enforced tolerance. George W. Bush was strung up for visiting Bob Jones University, which had a policy against interracial dating. So what about the dating policy in conservative Jewish organizations: the strict stance against intermarriage? This is not something anyone is supposed to talk about. Non-Jews give these issues wide berth. And people like myself, who have intermarried, are sufficiently ashamed about their choice–hastening the destruction of the Jewish people, we’re told–that they rarely speak up to defend it ... The rhetoric and practices surrounding opposition to intermarriage are often so discriminatory they seem to border on racism. The Jewish mistrust of gentile culture is deeply imbedded, and God knows Christians have again and again given Jews ample basis for these feelings. The Yiddish word goy is loaded with negative associations, and the word shiksa, which everyone still uses, comes from Hebrew for 'blemish,' according to Leo Rosten. In ancient times rabbis barred Jews from eating or drinking with non-Jews, lest they intermarry, and such attitudes prevailed widely in the American Jewish community just a generation ago. They treated you like you were dead if you intermarried, they sat shivah for you, they said that you were doing Hitler’s work. Movies like The Heartbreak Kid reminded Jews of what they were losing in marrying out, painting Christian culture as cold and heartless. A lot of the details in that portrait were deadly."

A Life of Pain and Grace. The Age [Australia], August 6, 2001
"Cardinal [Jean-Marie] Lustiger, the 75-year-old Archbishop of Paris, a Jew who might one day be pope, has offended both Jews and Catholics, sparked angry debates and been shunned by those he loved most. The strangest part of his story is not even that he was born to Polish Jewish parents (one of whom would perish in Auschwitz), converted to Catholicism at the age of 14 and rose through the Vatican hierarchy ... 'I was born Jewish and so I remain, even if that's unacceptable for many,' Lustiger told The New York Times when he became a cardinal in 1983. 'For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim. That's my hope and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it. For me, this nomination was as if all of a sudden the crucifix began to wear a yellow star' ... He has publicly criticised priests who indulged in more vicious criticisms of Israel ... Lustiger explained the emotional pull of his origins to Elie Wiesel: 'I feel Jewish. I refuse to renounce my roots, my Jewishness. How could I betray my mother's memory? It would be cowardly and humiliating.' In theological terms, Christianity can accommodate Lustiger's duality. One can be both a believer in the New Testament and Jewish. Says Melbourne's Father Gerald O'Collins: 'A Jewish cardinal is very important because if the College of Cardinals is to be truly Christian there ought to be at least one Jewish Catholic.' But Judaism has no such latitude. According to Jewish law a person who is born Jewish dies Jewish. It is not a club from which one can rescind membership."

Mensch or Maus? Jewish.com, 1996
"Rabbi Harold Schulweis' sermon last Friday evening at Valley Beth Shalom, encouraging outreach to potential converts to Judaism, may draw as much heat as this week's Malibu blaze. Schulweis himself told me that the response has been 'positive' and reassuring. But I have heard otherwise. Orthodox critics are declaring that Schulweis has taken a dangerous step toward proselytizing. Liberal Jews are concerned that he is making a concession to intermarriage, that he is assuming the battle is lost and the only hope of sustaining Jewish life is in emphasizing conversion of the non-Jewish spouse ... It is clear that, for the rabbi, breaking clear of the stigma attached to conversion is a major psychological hurdle. Schulweis conceded that when Rabbi Alexander Schindler, former head of the Reform movement, first suggested reaching out to non-Jews, he objected. 'I always felt this wasn't Jewish. I had to rethink my position,' he said. Last week, Schulweis wrote to Schindler, thanking him for offering a new idea. As his speech made clear, Schulweis considers the bias against converts part of Jewish 'racism,' the notion that even a 'chicken soup Jew' is better than a 'Jew by choice.'"

A Dangerous Beast, by Leonard Fein.
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, August 24, 2001
"But no matter, not any more. Events overtake and overwhelm. [There was a suicide bomber at] King George and Jaffa, a corner just about everyone who has been to Israel knows. Animals. Where is the one among them who will have the decency to say that these horrid actions disgrace the cause they seek to promote, as well as the faith on which they allegedly rest? Well then, what to do? Let us stipulate that they are, indeed, animals, that it is Israel’s sorry fate to be locked in a deathly battle with wild beasts ... But short of uprooting the population of the West Bank and Gaza, loading them onto trucks and dumping all 2 million of them in, say, the Sinai Desert, it is impossible to specify what the targets or the strategic aims of an 'all-out' offensive might be ... Well, then, what of rewards? Bribe the wild beast into domesticity ... Rational persuasion? By definition, a wild beast is not susceptible to rational persuasion."

A Non-Racist Zionism? Al-Ahram [Cairo, Egypt], August 23-29, 2001
"All of this confirms that Zionism is not, as its adherents would have the world believe, merely the national expression of Jewish self-determination, but an intrinsically racist ideology that justifies the most brutal acts of repression against the Palestinians as necessary for the security of one specific racial group. How can the United Nations, which has issued countless resolutions condemning doctrines of racial differentiation and superiority as morally reprehensible and socially unjust, refuse to even consider a resolution equating Zionism with racism? ... And when it comes to equating Zionism with racism, the criterion cannot be what Israel, or the US for that matter, has to say on the issue, but what the parties suffering from the racist practices of Israel have to say, notably the Palestinians, particularly with the present escalation of violence in the occupied territories, where Israel's systematic war of extermination and expropriation against a native civilian population displays all the characteristics of a policy of ethnic cleansing -- which the United Nations has defined as a war crime."

Jewish Ethics. Are They Ethical? Are They Jewish, by Tzvi Howard Adelman,
The Jewish Agency for Israel [The Department for Jewish Zionist Education], August 22, 1999
"For example, the Torah commands the extermination of various peoples (Deuteronomy 7:1-5) in the Mechilta it says, 'tov shebagoyim harog,' 'kill the best among the gentiles' (14:7; cf. Soferim ch. 15:10). There is another discussion about who has priority for drawing water at a well in which some rabbis argued that the needs of the local Jews to water their cattle or to do their laundry took precedence over the lives of strangers (Tosefta Baba Metzia 11:33-36) ... By the time of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, even the strongest defenders of the Jews both among the Christians and among the Jews conceded that the Jews were deficient in their ethical behavior ... The issue of Jewish criminality was elaborated upon by Johann David Michaelis, a German Bible scholar, who noted the high rate of Jewish criminal convictions and membership in gangs ... As other aspects of Jewish practice and belief are abandoned by large numbers of Jews, they are still driven by the desire to prove that Judaism still has something to offer its adherents and the world at large. For these reasons, Jewish Reformers in the nineteenth century began to present Judaism in terms of its 'Mission' which was to bring to the world the idea of 'ethical monotheism.' Such a construction served not only as a response to Christian attacks, but as a way to fill the void for Jews who were dissatisfied with Jewish ritual, communal life, but yearned for a reason to hold on to being Jewish. Many Jews, especially religious Jews today in Israel and their supporters abroad continue to adhere to traditional Jewish ethics that other Jews would like to ignore or explain away. For example, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus/Shechem, after several of his students were remanded on suspicion of murdering a teenage Arab girl: 'Jewish blood is not the same as the blood of a goy.' Rabbi Ido Elba: 'According to the Torah, we are in a situation of pikuah nefesh (saving a life) in time of war, and in such a situation one may kill any Gentile.' Rabbi Yisrael Ariel write [sic] in 1982 that 'Beirut is part of the Land of Israel. . . our leaders should have entered Lebanon and Beirut without hesitation, and killed every single one of them. Not a memory should have remained.' It is usually yeshiva [Jewish religious school] students who chant 'Death to the Arabs' on CNN. The stealing and corruption by religious leaders that has recently been documented in trials in Israel and abroad continues to raise the question of the relationship between Judaism and ethics. Thus literature on Jewish ethics is produced because Jews feel a need for it. Jews still feel a tension between universalistic commitments and the specific obligations of Jewish survival."

A small collection, from scholarly sources, about traditional Jewry's Yiddish views of itself and non-Jews, [What Did Traditional Jewish Folklore Think of Jewish Ethics Before Jews Were Reinvented, Post-Holocaust, as Historical Angels? And What Is the Traditional Jewish View of Other People?]

On the Corner. Village Voice, July 25-31, 2001
"Resentment is high between the Satmar Jews of Williamsburg [New York] and a hundred or so Polish day laborers who clean for them. A half-century after the war, the slaughter of their brethren burns the Jews like a live wire. Ask nearly any Satmar to define the neighborhood and he or she will tell you, 'We're a community of Holocaust survivors.' They're keenly aware that Poland's large Jewish population was annihilated during the war. Ask the Polish women how they like their work, and many ignore the question: 'The Jews blame us for the death camps in Poland,' they say. Echoing the Polish government's longtime position, they add, 'It was the Nazis that killed the Jews. Not the Polish people.' 'We want to be respected,' the Polish women say, fairly seething as they talk about standing on the corner like prostitutes, about scrubbing someone else's floor, about the good jobs they had in Poland before the end of Communism. ('How can they say they are so religious? God doesn't want you to be so cheap about money,' says one disgruntled woman.) Now the Poles are on the street corner, asking the Jews for a job, Jews with numbers tattooed on their arms, Jews for whom the names of Polish towns—Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor—are etched in memory. The irony is lost on no one ... [One Polish woman's] grandchildren are back in college. She pays for their education with 60 hours a week, scrubbing and dusting and wiping. She cleans the refrigerator gaskets with a matchstick, as she is asked, but won't scrub the floors on her hands and knees with a shmatte (rag), as the Jews request. She insists on using a mop. This costs her work and is a major source of tension between the Poles and the Jews ... If the sun has already set, and the Jews are proscribed from touching switches or machinery, they ask the cleaning women to turn on the lights and stove before they leave. The Polish women oblige, and then, with throbbing hands, pocket their money and head back to rented rooms."

Jewish Genes, by Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman.
The Tribe. The Cohen-Levi Family Heritage
"Recently published research in the field of molecular genetics – the study of DNA sequences – indicates that Jewish populations of the various Diaspora communities have retained their genetic identity throughout the exile. Despite large geographic distances between the communities and the passage of thousands of years, far removed Jewish communities share a similar genetic profile. This research confirms the common ancestry and common geographical origin of world Jewry ... 'Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.' (M.F. Hammer, Proc. Nat'l Academy of Science, June 9, 2000)"

On Integrating My Love and Commitment to Judaism and Jewish Community with My Love and Commitment to a Man Who Is Not Jewish, by Sarah Tauber, Interfaith Family (interfaithfamily.com)
"It might be assumed that I would have been pleased, therefore, to read the article reprinted in this magazine from the [Jewish ethnic magazine] Forward entitled, 'Reform [Judaism] allows Hebrew Schools to Hire Intermarried Teachers.' On the contrary. I was saddened and troubled by comments cited in this article. In spite of what the rabbinical leadership may have intended, their words and tone seemed to betray the continuing suspicion held by Jewish establishment leaders towards Jews married to individuals who are not Jewish, even though these Jews demonstrate commitment to Judaism and Jewish life. They describe us in terms akin to criminals on trial: 'Mixed marriage may be evidence that an individual is not the sort of Jew we want as a religious school teacher, and then again it may not. Each case must be judged on its own merits.' As I read those words I asked myself, as a Jew and as a trained and experienced teacher, the following questions: 'Has the Central Conference of American Rabbis ever clarified what 'sort of Jew' they seek as a religious school teacher? Or is it only in the case of a Jew married to an individual who isn't Jewish that suddenly the criteria become urgent? Is it possible that the CCAR views other Jews--for example, untrained college students, inexperienced young singles, homosexuals and lesbians, housewives, older divorced men--as not posing any serious concern to the rabbinical leadership, while Jews who are married to individuals who are not Jewish are put on trial?"

Birthright Israel Gives American Jewish Youth Largest, Most Meaningful Hanukah Gift, PR Newswire [at findarticles.com], November 22, 1999
"Birthright Israel announced today that arrangements have been finalized for the largest and most extensive philanthropic outreach program ever targeting Jewish youth. This year's inaugural program will take 5,000 North American Jewish students to visit the Jewish homeland for free. Scheduled to take place over the turn of the new millennium, the inaugural ten-day trips are being funded by a planned $210 million in contributions over five years from major philanthropists, the Government of Israel, and Jewish communities worldwide ... At the start of the 21st century, Judaism's adversity comes from within, as assimilation threatens Jewish communities in North America and around the world. Birthright Israel aims to reinvigorate and revitalize American Jewish youth's commitment to Judaism by providing Jewish students (the majority of whom are marginally affiliated Jews) with a profound and lasting experience in Israel ... 'The 5,000 North American Jewish youth who begin leaving for Israel next month will be the first in what is planned to be a traditional rite of passage for young Jewish adults worldwide. We hope that by experiencing Israel first hand, young Jews will forge a lasting bond with their Jewish homeland, heritage, and community,' commented Charles R. Bronfman, co-founder of Birthright Israel."

The Jewish Question, National Review, December 21, 1998 [book review]
"The story of how [David] Klinghoffer, a senior editor of NR, came to seek knowledge of God and Torah is undoubtedly unlike that of any other Orthodox Jew ... At age five, David was told by his adoptive parents that his biological parents were gentiles. In eighth grade, he opened a book given to him by his maternal grandmother, To Be a Jew, by Rabbi Hayim Halevy Donin. The book introduced the boy to the Orthodox understanding of halakha, the body of Jewish laws derived from the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) and its traditional interpretations (the Oral Torah). He was struck by 'one of the most unexpected sentences of my reading life': 'A child born to a non-Jewish mother, regardless of who the father is, has the status of a non-Jew according to Jewish law' ... In one of the book's many sorry-I-laughed scenes, the adolescent David, after being told by a local Lubavitcher that he is not a Jew, performs a decidedly unorthodox self-conversion ritual in his bathroom, soaping a razor blade with a bar of Irish Spring, cutting himself to extract the required bead of blood for a symbolic circumcision, reciting the requisite prayer, and dunking himself in a make-shift mikvah-a lukewarm tub standing in for a ritual pool of water: 'I was a Jew now, I thought' ... He tracked down his birth mother. In due course, they discussed why she chose the Klinghoffers as his adoptive parents. 'Well, you know,' she told him, 'my mother was Jewish' by way of a Jewish great-grandfather with the surname Goldkuhl. With a surge of tribalist adrenaline, he 'sat bolt upright. . . . If this was true, I was part Jewish by blood! . . . I realized that, to be precise, my blood was one-sixteenth Jewish. . . . I could walk into a synagogue or a kosher restaurant and return the curious glances,' for the Goldkuhl family was 'my blood link with the Nation of Israel.'"

Doomsday Demographer Gets a Hearing at the Prime Minister's Office,
Jerusalem Report, November 5, 2001
"Haifa University [in Israel] geographer Arnon Soffer was summoned to the Prime Minister's Office on October 15, to brief the committee of directors general of government ministries on his doomsday predictions. Soffer says he got a 'sympathetic hearing,' and believes his proposed solution — unilateral separation from the Palestinians, and from some of Israel's Arabs as well — may now be seriously examined for policy purposes. Government officials comfirmed the meeting, but would not comment on the content or implications. Soffer claims dramatically that current population trends mean that Israel will 'cease to exist' as a Jewish state by 2020, by when he's convinced that only 42 percent of the people in Israel proper, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will be Jewish; today, the figure is 50.5 percent. He cites higher Palestinian birthrates — a Muslim mother in Gaza has 7.5 children, on average, while the West Bank figure is 5 (compared to the Jewish mother's average 2.8) — and the constant influx of illegal Arab migration into Israel."

The Jewish Stake in America's Changing Demography, by Stephen Steinlight, formerly Director of National Affairs at the American Jewish Committee
Center for Immigration Studies, October 2001
"We cannot consider the inevitable consequences of current [immigration] trends -- not the least among them diminished Jewish political power -- with detachment ... We Jews need to be especially sensitive to the multinational model this crowd (many of them Jewish) is promoting. Why? Because one person’s 'celebration' of his own diversity, foreign ties, and the maintenance of cultural and religious traditions that set him apart is another’s balkanizing identity politics. We are not immune from the reality of multiple identities or the charge of divided loyalties, a classic staple of anti-Semitism, and we must recognize that our own patterns are easily assailed, and we need to find ways of defending them more effectively as the debate goes on. Much public opinion survey research undertaken in recent years continues to indicate that large numbers of Americans, particularly people of color, assert that Jews are more loyal to Israel than the United States. For Jews, it is at best hypocritical, and, worse, an example of an utter lack of self-awareness, not to recognize that we are up to our necks in this problem. This has been especially true once we were sufficiently accepted in the United States to feel confident enough to go public with our own identity politics. But this newfound confidence carries its own costs; people are observing us closely, and what they see in our behavior is not always distinct from what we loudly decry in others. One has to be amused, even amazed, when colleagues in the organized Jewish world wring their hands about black nationalism, Afrocentrism, or with cultural separatism in general — without considering Jewish behavioral parallels. Where has our vaunted Jewish self-awareness flown? I’ll confess it, at least: like thousands of other typical Jewish kids of my generation, I was reared as a Jewish nationalist, even a quasi-separatist. Every summer for two months for 10 formative years during my childhood and adolescence I attended Jewish summer camp. There, each morning, I saluted a foreign flag, dressed in a uniform reflecting its colors, sang a foreign national anthem, learned a foreign language, learned foreign folk songs and dances, and was taught that Israel was the true homeland. Emigration to Israel was considered the highest virtue, and, like many other Jewish teens of my generation, I spent two summers working in Israel on a collective farm while I contemplated that possibility. More tacitly and subconsciously, I was taught the superiority of my people to the gentiles who had oppressed us. We were taught to view non-Jews as untrustworthy outsiders, people from whom sudden gusts of hatred might be anticipated, people less sensitive, intelligent, and moral than ourselves. We were also taught that the lesson of our dark history is that we could rely on no one."

Make It a "March of Love," by Edward Moskol (president of the Polish National Alliance-USA), Dialogue on Jewish-Polish Relations
"According to the opening words of its Homepage on the Internet, 'The March of the Living is a yearly journey where thousands of primarily Jewish teens from around the world gather in Poland and Israel to mark two of the most significant dates on the modern calendar: Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israel Independence Day. The purpose of this trip is to give students a first hand look at history and the evils of mankind.' In actuality, each year in May, on a day commemorated by the Jewish community as 'Holocaust Day,' Poland surrenders a bit of its sovereignty. On that day in Oswiecim, the Polish town situated near the German-created World War II concentration camp of Auschwitz, Jewish organizers and Israeli agents control the streets, while thousands of young Jews hurl insults and epithets at those Poles who dare come upon the scene. A self-proclaimed 'March of the Living,' the parade from Auschwitz to the neighboring Birkenau camp, has become something more akin to a 'March of Hate.' Ostensibly held to educate the young about a Holocaust they did not experience, it has evolved into an opportunity for Jews to claim singular suffering at the hands of the Nazis and to inculcate anti-Polonism within the participants."

It Is Absurd to Say that Israel Is Not a Racist State, by Charley Reese,
King Features Syndicate (Reese is a columnist at the Orlando Sentinal)
"It was no surprise that the United States and Israel walked out of a United Nations conference on racism as soon as Israel came in for criticism. It is, however, a disgrace. Israel certainly is a racist state. Its own human-rights advocates call it that. The claim that Israel doesn't discriminate against non-Jews is absurd on its face. Suppose, for example, the U.S. Congress passed a law that said the United States is a Christian, Anglo-Saxon nation and that any Christian, Anglo-Saxon person anywhere in the world is automatically eligible to become a citizen. Do you seriously think the Anti-Defamation League would not have a conniption fit and scream racism? Well, Israel has such a law for Jews. Thus a Russian Jew, for example, can become a citizen, but a Palestinian driven out of his own country in 1948 cannot return. Suppose, for another example, a group of wealthy people established the Christian National Fund. This fund would be used to purchase property. Once purchased, the property could never be sold to, rented to or leased to a non-Christian. Would that not be called discrimination? Well, there is such a fund called the Jewish National Fund, which has all of those restrictions on the property it owns. It played a great part in establishing Israel. And, of course, if American officials routinely issued building permits to Christian Anglo-Saxons while denying them to Jews or other groups, that would be considered racist. And neighborhoods that denied non-Christians an opportunity to buy or rent would likewise be considered racist. All of these forms of discrimination are practiced in Israel against Palestinians."

A Chasidic Spokesman Espouses Modernity -- and Race Separation,
[Jewish] Forward, April 13, 2001
"A beloved teacher at Yeshiva University High School for Boys — a Modern Orthodox, not chasidic, institution — Rabbi [Mayer] Schiller also spent years writing and preaching in defense of European culture, group identity and, most controversially, racial separatism. Rabbi Schiller, 49, has made common cause with and spoken before a cast of characters and organizations that would send most American Jews running to the Anti- Defamation League: American white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists, Conrad Muhammad of the Nation of Islam and right-wing European nationalists. In a series of interviews with the Forward, Rabbi Schiller declined to discuss for the record his published views on race. Officials at Yeshiva University High School, also known as MTA, said Rabbi Schiller's silence stems from an agreement that he made with school administrators five years ago, prohibiting Rabbi Schiller from discussing racial issues with students or in any public forum ... Several of Rabbi Schiller's former students and rabbinical colleagues said they oppose his separatist views, but that his fascination with controversial nationalist causes stem not from a hatred for racial minorities, but a rejection of post-Enlightenment universalism and secularism."

Results of Poll Sponsored by Israel Policy Forum, the Jewish Week, and the Wilstein Institute of Jewish Policy Studies Studies,
Jewish Week, November 20, 2001
This poll of Jewish Americans found "the most important issue or problem facing the Jewish community in the United States today" to be 1) anti-Semitism [23%], 2) Peace and Security for Israel, 3) Terrorism [13%], 4) Intermarriage [i.e., marrying non-Jews - 12%], and 5) U.S.-Israeli relations [8%]. Public education was 8th, poverty and hunger 9th, and the environment 10th [all with 1%]. 89% of respondents were "strongly favorable' or "somewhat favorable" to Israel. (Another 5% ventured no opinion, 1% didn't respond, 3% were "somewhat unsupportive, and 2% "strongly unsupportive.") 59% were even "strongly favorable" or "somewhat favorable" to Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who faces a possible trial in Belgium for war crimes in Lebanon.

In the Genes. Understanding Jewish Genetic Diseases,
Chicago Jewish News
"[A] certain group of conditions are unusually common among Jews of Eastern European or Ashkenazi descent. (We'll come to their Sephardic cousins later.) Although these diseases can affect Sephardic Jews and non-Jews as well, they afflict Ashkenazi Jews more often as much as 20 to 100 times more frequently ... Because for centuries Jews tended to marry within their faith and their community, the relatively high frequency of these genes among Jews stayed within the larger Jewish community. Their effects were not diluted by the introduction of other genes from outside the Ashkenazi Jewish community, nor did the high frequency of these genes among Jews pass into other communities."

Critics Charge Racism as Jewish State Places 'Quota' on Ethiopians,
[Jewish] Forward, December 28, 2001
"Critics are claiming racism is behind what they say is the Israeli government's establishment of a 400-person monthly quota on immigration from Ethiopia — even for those who qualify under the Law of Return. Ethiopian Jewry activists complain that the quota and what they cite as a lack of humanitarian aid from American Jewish philanthropies are doubly offensive because of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's recent calls for a mass immigration of Jews from Argentina, France, Australia and South Africa. The plight of Ethiopian Jews is being ignored, activists charge, even as Israel and the quasi governmental Jewish Agency for Israel, the main overseas recipient of monies raised by federations within the United Jewish Communities system, are investing millions of dollars to encourage immigration from those countries and the former Soviet Union. 'This is the first time that there is a quota on an ethnic basis,' said Avraham Neguise, head of the Israel-based advocacy group South Wing to Zion. 'In Ethiopia they created an ethnic quota. It's clear discrimination against black Jews.'"

Pol's Bid to Honor Slain Israeli Driving Debate Over 'Transfer,'
[Jewish] Forward, January 25, 2002
"A freshman New York City councilman is winning some powerful endorsements for his proposal to name a street in his native Queens after slain Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam "Gandhi" Ze'evi, who had urged the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The proposal by Democrat David Weprin, who chairs the City Council's powerful finance committee, has won the endorsement of State Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn, as well as Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in the Bronx. A representative of the American Jewish Committee said the organization would back Mr. Weprin's proposal if the City Council approves it. The city's Jewish Community Relations Council said it would not object to naming a street after the former major general, who was assassinated by a militant Palestinian group last October. Opposition to the proposed street-naming was voiced by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Americans for Peace Now and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat. 'How in the hell can you name a street after [Ze'evi] and not claim you're embracing his views?' said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of UAHC. 'Honoring him in this way inevitably serves to give an endorsement to his views. Those views were unacceptable to most Jews and most Israelis before his assassination. It is incumbent particularly upon Diaspora Jews to be reminded of what he stood for, and having been reminded, we have to delegitimize him.' Mr. Weprin first announced his plans to name a single city block after Ze'evi at a memorial dinner for the slain Israeli, organized January 6 by the National Council of Young Israel. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the event, praised Ze'evi for his attention to Israel's security. Mr. Netanyahu had refused to admit Ze'evi into his own governing coalition in 1996 because of the extremism of Ze'evi's views. The enthusiasm of some mainstream Jewish organizations for the street-naming proposal may be the latest sign of what communal leaders say is a new era in which it is no longer verboten for American Jews to discuss, or in some cases promote, Ze'evi's platform of 'transfer.' The term 'transfer' has come to refer to the mass removal of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to other Arab countries by means that Ze'evi himself was often vague about. Most mainstream Jewish groups, from left to right, historically have rejected the doctrine as immoral. 'About two years ago I heard almost no one mention the topic of transfer,' said the national president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein. 'Now Jews who would never breathe such a word are saying it.'" [From the Guardian (London), 10-17-01: "[Ze'evi] was widely respected [by Israelis], even by political opponents, for his distinguished war record, but his advocacy of what he called the 'transfer' of Palestinians across the borders into the neighbouring Arab countries was condemned by many as racist ... He sparked controversy in July for referring to Palestinians working and living illegally in Israel as 'lice' and a 'cancer.'" Global Beat Syndicate, 10-21-01: "If you are Palestinian, Ze'evi represented one of the most racist elements in the Israeli political spectrum. His politics openly called for the expulsion of Palestinians from their indigenous homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the rest of the Arab world. His death comes after Israel successfully carried out 60 political assassinations of Palestinians over the past 12 months."

Soldier's Burial as a Non-Jew Adds to List of Israel's Pain,
New York Times, Feb. 23, 2002
"Staff Sgt. Michael Oxman died with five comrades when Palestinian gunmen attacked an Israeli outpost in the West Bank on Tuesday night. On Friday, he was buried apart from them, in the section of a military cemetery set aside for non- Jews. Sergeant Oxman, a 21-year-old immigrant from Ukraine who considered himself Jewish, like his father, did not qualify as such under Jewish law because his mother is not Jewish. For a society with more than enough on its mind already, the separate-but-equal treatment accorded the sergeant introduced a new ripple of consternation. 'He was Jewish enough to enlist, to fight and to die with them,' his commander, identified only as Barry, told Israel radio. 'It is very regretful and very sorrowful for us all.'"

Anatomy of a Conditionally Unresolved Conflict -- A Personal and Philosophical Reflection, Gilad Atzmon, December 2000
"I suggest that uncovering the philosophy behind a number of fundamental Jewish precepts will clearly manifest the terrible truth that the Israeli-Arab conflict is conditionally unresolved ... For many years I have experienced deep feelings of disappointment and disenchantment with my own people. As we all know, identity can be a complicated issue. One does not have a say regarding one's parents, place of birth, gender, racial origin or even religious inheritance. Nobody asked me if I wanted to be born a Jew or an Israeli. Nobody consulted me when I was just eight days old about whether I wanted to sacrifice a part of my body in order to determine my identity. When I was just over a week old, without proving any superiority or excellence in any given domain, I became 'chosen'. I have to admit that most of the Jewish people I have ever came across are more than happy with their given identity and are proud to be Jewish. Unfortunately I am not. On the contrary, the older I get the more I find myself ashamed of my own people and this paper is about my shame ... I would like to address the concept of 'choseness.' I believe that 'choseness' is one of the most fundamental characteristics of 'Jewish understanding'. One can remove a substantial amount of religious law and ritual from Jewish life (e.g. the Reform movement) and one can even remove the whole of religious practice without really affecting Jewish identity (as we know there are many secular Jews). But whenever one removes 'choseness,' there is very little left with which the Jew can identify. In other words, by removing 'choseness,' the Jew, in effect, becomes converted to something else (converted into Christianity or, more generally, into an ordinary human being). The concept of 'choseness' is bound up with many Jewish concepts of self-alienation or even positive discrimination such as Kosher food, Minian as well as the process of conversion. These concepts share a common denominator that suppress any experience of social interaction with the Other. In other words, Jews are discouraged from assimilating with their non-Jewish environment (the Hebrew word for assimilation is Hit-bo-le-lout which comes from the root word Blil which is commonly understood to mean 'mass' or 'confusion', hence le-hit-bo-lel, to assimilate, means to get confused, to be one of the mass, to lose your authenticity ). The result of this is that the possibility of 'loving thy neighbour' is denied. In general, as we shall see, 'Jewish understanding' (unlike Judaism) leads to ignorance of the Other. When I talk about the Other, I refer to that which is conditionally different from myself. The Other is the one with whom one can empathize because, and only because, he is different."

In Israel, Distressed Signals from Ethiopians,
Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 2002
"The gap between black and white Israelis seems, with some exceptions, to be growing. For Ethiopians, it is visible in impoverished neighborhoods, soaring unemployment, and the highest high-school dropout rate of any Jewish group in Israel. Twenty-six percent of Ethiopian youths have either dropped out or do not show up for classes most of the time, raising concerns that the community's current difficulties may become chronic. Drug use, including glue-sniffing, is on the rise, and criminal activity, hardly known among Ethiopians before they came to Israel, has been growing ... to Asher Elias, a staff member at the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews (IAEJ). 'Ethiopians have lots of motivation to become Israelis, but they are not accepted,' he says. 'In jobs, in education, people feel they are discriminated against because they are black. I'm not saying it is right or wrong, but it is what we are feeling, and that is enough.' A low point in the relationship between Ethiopian Jews and Israelis came in 1996, when it was revealed that Israeli hospitals had thrown out all blood donated by Ethiopians. "These were donations to help other Israelis," Mr. Elias says. "[Ethiopians] said to each other: 'What do they think? That we are not humans?' Habad, one of Israel's stronger orthodox religious groups, doesn't recognize Ethiopians as Jews or allow their children into its kindergartens."