Economy puts pressure on Jewish community

From: The Jewish Journal

The food pantry would not open for another 40 minutes, but already about a dozen people were waiting in the parking lot, many holding umbrellas to shield themselves from the blistering San Fernando Valley sun. Before day's end, more than 100 people, Jews and non-Jews alike, many coming on foot or by bus, would visit SOVA's Van Nuys pantry to apply for food stamps, register with a dietician and, most certainly, receive the groceries they need -- literally -- to put dinner on the table.

So began a regular day at one of the three pantries SOVA Community Food & Resource Program operates throughout the city, evidence of an experience that has become familiar for a growing number of indigent families across Los Angeles.

These are tough times for all Americans. The drama working its way through the economy -- surging gas and food prices, crises in the housing and financial markets, climbing unemployment rates and a dismal overall outlook -- has been written into the American Jewish story, too. That much is abundantly clear from a trip to SOVA.

Monthly traffic at the food banks has more than doubled since 2002, to about 5,600 client visits in June, the busiest month since Thanksgiving. Only about 10 percent of those who come are homeless; the overwhelming majority are unemployed or, increasingly, underemployed.

This is, of course, exactly the need SOVA exists to fill. But these days there is no way its 15-person staff can fully compensate for the swelling demand on resources and the shriveling of public and private support.

"You are really talking about a perfect storm in the social service world of not being able to raise private dollars to make up for the sagging or lagging public dollars," said Paul Castro, executive director and CEO of SOVA's parent, Jewish Family Service (JFS).

The scariest reality for many organizations is how unclear the future remains. So far, many charities report that fundraising is on pace with last year, but at the same time, officials admit the situation could go south in a hurry if the economy doesn't improve. The demand for resources continues to climb each month for many, but social service organizations' financial health won't be fully known until donors write their final checks for 2008.

Already there are signs of belt-tightening: Last month, when SOVA's executive director left for another job, she was replaced by Joan Mithers, JFS' director of community programs and staff training. Mithers new role was blended with her old, and that position was frozen. More trimming is expected as soaring food costs continue to push SOVA's $1.5 million budget upward. And that is assuming end-of-year fundraising can live up to budgeted expectations.

That story could be told this summer over and over throughout the world of philanthropy in general and Jewish communal service specifically.

"It's really a catch-22," said Jay Soloway, director of career services for Jewish Vocational Service, which through June this year has seen a 50 percent spike in referrals from SOVA and an increasing number of clients holding master's degrees.

At the same time, in May, United Jewish Communities (UJC), the umbrella organization for North American federations, adopted a $37 million budget that was $3.2 million lighter than the previous years and included the reduction of 32 jobs.

Last month, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) announced that it would cut 60 jobs, including 52 in Israel, to deal with a $60 million budget deficit, due, in large part, to the dollar's dropping value and the rising cost of work abroad.

And locally, Steven Windmueller, dean of the Los Angeles campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, said the Reform college is evaluating the practicality of shaving a day off the workweek. Windmueller said other institutions and organizations are doing the same.

"The question [nonprofits] have to come up with," Windmueller said, "is whether this is viable for their operations, for meeting state law with hourly earners and whether the expectations of their donors and members and clients can be met in the context of a four-day workweek."

Some organizations will choose to borrow heavily to sustain programming, while many will cut back services and reduce staff, said Stacy Palmer, editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Others will choose to collaborate or merge with another organization, and a few will likely call it quits.

Nevertheless, a broad survey of Jewish schools, synagogues and social service agencies big and small -- from the JDC to Project Chicken Soup -- depicts a mosaic of caution and pragmatic optimism, an awareness that the sky is not yet falling, but it very well could.

"We all have to proceed forward knowing that there is this ambiguity, there are a lot of pieces of a complex puzzle which are not filling in the gestalt of the communal reality," John Fishel, president of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, said in an interview last week. "I start from a premise of 'let's be practical; let's assume the best, but be aware that the best may not be able to be achieved.'"

That perspective is a reflection of just how jarring the decline in the American economy has been during the past 12 months.

Inflation nationwide was up 5.5 percent in June from the previous year. California's jobless rate climbed to 6.9 percent. Stocks have fallen sharply, with the S&P 500 off about 22 percent last week from its October peak.

Home prices are dropping fast, too, the result of a combination of prices artificially inflated by speculators, fraudulent or high-risk mortgage lending and some resultant mass hysteria. New construction, a huge source of labor in California and nationally, has stalled; lenders are struggling to stay afloat, with IndyMac leaving the loan business and laying off 3,800; the government is considering how to secure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and, according to PropertyShark.com, Los Angeles County foreclosures spiked to 14,505 in the second quarter, almost quadruple the number during the same period in 2007.

Bad news has been coming even from places that report the news -- the Los Angeles Times last week began its latest round of cuts, about 250 employees, including 17 percent of the newsroom. Questions about whether the United States is in a recession or on the cusp of one have been pretty much settled.

The query now -- tantamount to both individuals wrestling with life changes and the organizations seeking to help them -- is: for how long?

"The effects of the housing contraction and of the financial headwinds on spending and economic activity have been compounded by rapid increases in the prices of energy and other commodities, which have sapped household purchasing power even as they have boosted inflation," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told the House Committee on Financial Services last week.

"As events in recent weeks have demonstrated," he added, "many financial markets and institutions remain under considerable stress, in part because the outlook for the economy, and thus far credit quality, remains uncertain."

For Avi Edery, a 35-year-old Israeli native living in Woodland Hills, "sapped purchasing power" began a breakneck decline in the fortune of his home-improvement business.

"This winter was really bad," Edery, said. "Beforehand, we could just go into a house, and people would pull off money from their equity, whatever they wanted, and just roll with it. Now, nobody."

Edery and his wife fell behind on their rent. His credit was poor and their savings small. Traditional borrowing wasn't much of an option.

But Jewish Free Loan Association, with an interest-free emergency rental loan for up to $3,000, offered enough to stem the tide. Edery applied last month and was quickly approved.

"It's not a lot of money," he said. "But every penny helps when you are in need."

And who isn't in need when Jewish life can be so expensive? Synagogue dues, Hebrew school, summer camp, kosher food, the occasional trip to Israel -- the individual costs of Jewish involvement -- can significantly tap into "the discretionary income of practically every middle-class Jewish family in America," said Gary A. Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research in San Francisco.

When times are tight, some families look to congregational membership and Jewish education as significant expenses they can cut.

"A year ago, people still had savings, and they did not think it would take a year for them to find another place of employment," said David Brook, executive director of Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills, a congregation heavy with real estate professionals. "Now we are seeing those same people come in, and they have not found employment, so they are either starting their own business or going into a new industry. We as a synagogue have to be there to help them. These are families that have children in our religious school and our preschool, and we will not deny a Jewish education to any of them."

Life was precarious enough last year for many congregants at Temple Aliyah, which budgeted about $50,000 for members needing dues reductions. These members, some paying as little as $180 for an annual membership that a family of four would ordinarily pay as much as $2,500 for, accounted for about 5 percent of the temple's 900 families.

"Seventy-five percent of the congregants who were asking for dues reductions were Realtors. And we also had two open administrative assistant positions, and we had Realtors applying for those," Brook said. "Then midway through the year, we had another open position, and we had Hollywood people applying because of the strike."

The temple budgeted 10 percent more for dues relief this year but won't know just what is needed until membership renewals roll in as the school year and High Holy Days approach. Unfortunately, Rabbi Stewart Vogel said, there are bound to be some who can no longer afford membership, but rather than ask for assistance, they will disappear from the synagogue community.

"I've had families who I tell, 'This is the job of the synagogue,'" Vogel said, "and they still don't take the help, because it makes them uncomfortable."

At Shalhevet School, where a Modern Orthodox high school education runs about $23,000 a year, one-third of students receive financial aid, Rabbi Elchanan J. Weinbach said. There has been an increase in scholarship applications from middle-class families.

"The wealthier families, thank God, can afford the cost, and the families at the bottom are the easiest to get assistance for," said Weinbach, who took over as head of school last month. "It's really the families who are somewhere in the middle that become the most painful cases."

In an effort to expand Shalhevet's scholarship fund, the school has been reaching out to affluent members of the community who have the means to increase their giving. Shalhevet, however, is not the only Jewish institution or organization turning to this community of higher-earning, committed Jews.

"In these kinds of troubles, there are some people who reach back and become more generous," Tobin said. "In every war Israel has fought, for example, people reach back. The capacity to do so is there. It's a matter of leadership and will."

When the real estate market was piping hot two years ago, friends courted him to build new homes on two parcels they had bought in Woodland Hills. They told Doustan the plans had been finalized and approved, and they offered $250,000. He bit.

But there were problems, and those only got worse as the market cooled. The plans hadn't been approved, and the partners' construction loan application had been denied. Doustan's payment was C.O.D., so the longer the project lagged, the more he had to tap into his savings, and the more he felt compelled to finance building expenses himself.

"After I got all the plans approved -- building, soil report, everything -- and I am already short $70,000," Doustan said, "they applied for a construction loan."

It was approved this time around in April 2007, but then the credit market soured, and the loan was cancelled before being administered.

Doustan finally cut his losses -- 60 years old and single, he became the suddenly unemployed owner of a $457,000 two-bedroom Woodland Hills townhouse, in which he sunk another $50,000 in upgrades and has since watched it fall in value roughly 20 percent.

"I had a very good business; I have been living on my savings," Doustan said. "It's almost reached the end, because everything has a limit. I haven't been paid in two years."

"The worst thing for me is I am not doing anything," Doustan said, eating baba ganoush during lunch last week at the Green Cottage Persian restaurant. "I feel restless. In New York, I used to work seven days a week. I feel worthless."

Doustan now finds himself in the place that many recent college grads do: He doesn't know what he wants to do for a living or how to search for a job, having never even drawn up a resume. But unlike the typical career virgin, Doustan has a healthy home mortgage.

So, four months ago, he turned to Jewish Vocational Service (JVS) after seeing an ad in The Jewish Journal. A career counselor helped him draft a resume and enrolled him in a four-week JVS course at the New JCC at Milken for seniors being pressured back into the workforce, as well as a logistics-training program at Santa Monica College. The counselor also is assisting Doustan with the job search.

"I am not financially desperate," Doustan said. "But I am desperate to do something."

The notion that a butterfly in Singapore could cause a tornado in Kansas seems an accurate parallel for the relationship between the health of industry and charity. When fortunes cool, donors, from the largest corporations and private foundations to the humblest of wage earners, have less money to give away. Soon, so, too, do governments. Eventually, reductions in prosperity trickle down to nonprofits.

"At our dinner last year, there were a number of financial service companies that had historically been big supporters, and when they are firing CEOs and laying off workers, one of the first things that gets cut is charitable donations," Mitch Kamin, executive director of Bet Tzedek Legal Services, said shortly after the organization's new fiscal year began July 1, on the eve of its big annual fundraiser, last Saturday's Justice Ball.

"Our overall fundraising numbers were not down, but I'm concerned about this coming year as companies and major donors and foundations are all looking at the impact of the economy on their giving," Kamin said. "It's not that people are walking away, but funders are cautious about what they support right now and how much they support."

At Project Chicken Soup, which delivers kosher meals two Sundays a month to 105 people in the county living with HIV/AIDS, slightly fewer volunteers have been participating lately. This partly is a symptom of summer, President Paul Chitlik said, but also could be tied to the cost for volunteers of commuting in and delivering the meals. What is clear is that donations, which usually increase this time of year, are flat. Food prices, on the other hand, are "spiraling."

"We have to do more fundraising to cover that," Chitlik said of the charity, which has a budget of about $100,000 and one 30-hour-a-week employee.

December represents the zero hour, the time for assessing just how close nonprofits came to their fundraising targets. This often is the case, but during a downturn in the economy it is especially so. A significant amount of supporters who commit in the first three quarters don't write their charitable checks until after Thanksgiving; many smaller-fund donors don't give at all until reviewing their year-end finances as New Year's Day approaches.

The Federation through mid-July, for example, was outstripping last year's fundraising, receiving donations and pledges of $35.1 million from donors who last year gave $30.3 million to a $49.8 million campaign. But Chairman Stanley Gold said in January he wants to increase fundraising this year by at least 10 percent, and the $14.7 million needed to equal last year's campaign isn't a gimme.

"We are going to be hopeful and just continue to push until Dec. 31, and then do the calculations on what we have," Fishel said.

Many organizations are now evaluating the easier decisions: prioritizing programming, paring travel expenses through reductions in staffing and frequency, looking for ways to work with other agencies. But there is no simple solution to the overall problem, and nobody knows how long the economic turmoil will last.

"Anybody who tells you they know the answer to that question is someone you should turn tail and run away from, because nobody knows," Tobin said. "This is one of those cases where you plan for the worst, and hope for the best."

The professor anti-Semites love

From: The Jewish Journal

Kevin MacDonald had just completed the first in a series of books that would come to define him. Awaiting feedback from his publisher 15 years ago, MacDonald sent his manuscript to a colleague in the psychology department at California State University Long Beach (CSULB). The feedback was not encouraging.

"What troubles me most is that your criticism of Jews may be taken seriously by groups and individuals who both fear and hate Jews," Martin Fiebert wrote in a 12-point reply. "Your manuscript, unintentionally perhaps, reinforces the stereotype that all Jews, be they assimilated or not, are clannish, deceptive, and exploitive. I'm sure you would be dismayed to find that your book has a treasured place in the bookcases of neo-Nazis along with 'Mein Kampf' and the 'Protocols of Zion.'"

How prophetic Fiebert's insight turned out to be.

MacDonald, 64, has been deemed America's "foremost anti-Semitic thinker" by civil rights experts. A tenured psychology professor who lent his expertise to Holocaust denier David Irving, MacDonald has suggested restricting college enrollment and increasing taxes for Jews to mediate what he perceives as inequities with non-Jewish whites.

His three-volume critique of Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy" -- known collectively as "The Culture of Critique" and published by Praeger in 1994, 1998 and 1998 -- claims the religion discourages inclusion, eggs on anti-Semitism and uses study of Talmud to thin the reproduction of less intelligent members. The books have become sacred scripture for white supremacists, and a growing number of MacDonald's colleagues have urged the university to denounce his writings.

"He is repackaging traditional anti-Jewish beliefs in contemporary pseudo-scientific language," said Jeffrey Blutinger, a history professor leading the push against MacDonald. "If you think of classic anti-Jewish tropes of Jews as clannish, conspiratorial, opposed to Christendom, a threat to the nation, using contemporary ideas as a way of undermining traditional beliefs -- all of these show up in his writing."

These are strange credentials for a man who in person seems every bit a slice of Midwest Americana. Part German, part Scottish, raised to be a traditional Catholic, though he is now agnostic, MacDonald was reared in a small Wisconsin town best known for the children's clothes that carry its name.

"Oshkosh was a great town to grow up in," MacDonald said in a recent conversation. "There weren't any Jewish families at all. I guess there was one; I knew one Jewish kid in high school. Nobody talked about Jews. There was no anti-Semitism in town. It was an unknown."

He first discovered his future research subjects as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He had a few Jews as roommates, and many more were fellow travelers in the anti-war movement. Almost three decades later, when MacDonald began connecting Jewish power and success to evolutionary strategies, he would identify his leftist years as the first time Jews used his gentile face to promote what he considered their group agenda. It wasn't until the '90s that MacDonald began to see Jewish communities as inimical entities slowly destroying their hosts.

"Jews are inevitably going to be an elite," he said. "They are smart; they are well organized. The problem, from my point of view, is that there is a hostility there, a fear and hostility, that over the past 40 years has resulted in some changes that have not been in the interest of people like me. As simple as that."

MacDonald's core complaint is Jewish influence on immigration laws. He blames passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, which abolished national origin quotas and made immigration easier for non-Westerners, on a Jewish desire to oust European Americans from the majority.

"European people in this country will be a minority in a few years," MacDonald said. "I don't think that would have happened if we had had a sense of ourselves as a culture worth defending. Now, everything is up for grabs."

He sat for the first of two interviews in his cramped office on campus. Tall and lanky, with white hair and a disarming smile, MacDonald hardly looks like America's scariest academic. He is affable, even in light of the vilification he's received, much of it from -- and this shouldn't surprise -- Jewish peers and organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

"Everybody who crosses them, they are going to have a price to pay," MacDonald said. "People won't be seen with me; they won't talk to me; they won't have lunch with me. I am pretty much a nonentity around here."

Until 2000, MacDonald was largely unknown on campus. Testifying for Irving in a lawsuit against Jewish historian Deborah Lipstadt attracted a flurry of attention. But then the storm quieted, and MacDonald was left alone to develop and detail his theories on Jewish strategies to "destroy" Western culture, typing out page after page in his office on the fourth floor of CSULB's 1970s-era psych building.

"He is not the type of guy who is going to dress up in a KKK outfit or swastika armband. The truth is that with his Ph.D and this veneer of respectability, he's very dangerous," said Heidi Beirich, who directs SPLC's research and special projects.

"The Nazi types are reading his stuff like it is the Bible," Beirich continued, "and they're using it to say why Jews should be exterminated, why they should be thrown out of the country -- because he says Jews are responsible for all this immigration that is destroying white culture. His books are like the new Bible of the movement."

Last spring, Beirich wrote a scathing profile of MacDonald for SPLC's magazine, Intelligence Report, and the local chapter of the ADL became more active in raising awareness. Then earlier this year, the ground ruptured beneath MacDonald when a few uneasy colleagues from a range of academic departments coalesced and began to urge CSULB President F. King Alexander to distance the school from its infamous academic.

Alexander so far has declined all such requests on the basis of academic freedom.

"Despite the fact that I personally disagree and even find deplorable some beliefs and opinions expressed by a few individuals on our campus, particularly those ideas that are hurtful of certain groups, I believe as Thomas Jefferson stated, that 'errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it,'" Alexander, who declined to be interviewed, said in a written statement.

"Universities should always ensure that good ideas always outweigh bad ideas," he continued. "Universities should also be firmly committed, even at times when it is against popular opinion, to freedom of thought, and when we act to restrict opinion from the far right or the far left, then it will not be long before we can no longer call ourselves a university."

But the pressure from the academic community to condemn MacDonald continues. During the past six weeks, the anthropology and history departments, as well as the Jewish studies program, all have issued statements denouncing MacDonald's work as "professionally irresponsible and morally untenable"; the psychology department voted to disassociate from his writings because of their popularity with "extremist groups."

"His approach to historical investigation is antithetical to our discipline in that he selects only those materials that support his preconceived thesis, while ignoring all evidence to the contrary," the history faculty's statement said. "MacDonald's misuse of historical methodology would be unacceptable in an undergraduate history paper; how much more disturbing, therefore, is the fact that in these writings he is identified as a professor at CSULB."



MacDonald's intellectual pursuits began innocently. In 1990, he'd been at Cal State Long Beach five years, teaching and researching child psychological development, when he read an article in the Los Angeles Times about the tight-knit 19th century Jewish community of Cheyenne, Wyo.

"They came with a distinct culture, community activities and forms of cooperation, and they practiced their religious rituals even in the most isolated conditions," the Times reported. "One child tells how before there was a rabbi in Cheyenne, his father dressed meat in the kosher tradition in the back of his furniture store."

The article made MacDonald think of animals.

He had graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1966 with a degree in philosophy and dreams of being a jazz musician. When reality sank in, MacDonald entered graduate school at the University of Connecticut in the mid-'70s, earning a master's in biology and then, four years later, a doctorate in biobehavorial science.

His research focused on the personalities of wolves, and by the time he left UConn in 1981 to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Illinois, MacDonald was convinced that, like the lab wolves he'd studied, human behavioral tendencies also led back to specific genetic blueprints. And that is where his mind wandered when he read about Cheyenne's Jews.

"My adviser, Benson Ginsburg, wrote an article saying that wolves would be a better model for human behavior than chimpanzees, because of social bonds and their acting like a family," MacDonald said. "They have to police the boundaries and police in-group behavior; you can't have freeloaders. My earliest research on the behavior of Jews focused on that, and you see wolf packs do that."

MacDonald began to think of Judaism as the vehicle through which an evolutionary strategy was mechanized. He decided to read Paul M. Johnston's "A History of the Jews" and the Tanakh, or as MacDonald knew it, the Old Testament, and within short order, he was mentally outlining "A People that Shall Dwell Alone."

The book became the first in his series, "The Culture of Critique." "A People that Shall Dwell Alone" lays the foundation for MacDonald's theory of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy and briefly discusses other groups that he believes employ similar strategies: Gypsies, the Amish, Chinese living abroad.

Jews, he pointed out, are taught they are different -- God's chosen -- and they are encouraged to live lives that benefit other Jews. They also marry within the Tribe, and more often their neighbors within their extended family, MacDonald wrote. Focusing on the Ashkenazim of Central and Eastern Europe, he argued that competition for resources benefited Jews who chose niche businesses, like trading and banking. And in one of his most controversial claims, MacDonald wrote that, over time Jews have grown increasingly successful because of a eugenics program built into the religion -- Talmud study, which helped determine which men got the prettiest wives, the best business opportunities and the most children.

"These documents contain a vast amount of material for which there are no practical functions at all," MacDonald wrote. "The incredible elaboration of Jewish religious law in these writings suggests that this mass of material is the result of intense intellectual competition within the Jewish community and that the resulting Torah then provided an arena for intellectual competition within the Jewish community."

The second volume, "Separation and its Discontents," offers an evolutionary explanation for anti-Semitism, from the late Roman Empire to modern Diaspora life, and discusses Jewish strategies for combating discrimination. The most controversial portion of this book, Chapter 5, compares Nazism to Judaism.

"The National Socialist movement in Germany from 1933-1945 is a departure from Western tendencies toward universalism and muted individualism in the direction of racial nationalism and cohesive collectivism.... It may be usefully conceptualized as a group evolutionary strategy that was characterized by several key features that mirrored Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy."

MacDonald concluded that Nazi ideology "may well have been caused or at least greatly facilitated by the presence of Judaism as a very salient and successful racially exclusive antithetical group strategy within German society."

His final volume in the series, "The Culture of Critique," focuses on Judaism as a culture of belittling non-Jews and makes broad claims about Jewish dominance in media and the social sciences, identification with radical leftist politics and influence over immigration laws. He argues in the preface to the paperback edition (2002) that Jewish intellectuals and influentials have discovered, and are committed to, the best strategy for "destroying Europeans": convincing them of their own moral bankruptcy. "And thus," he wrote, "the intense effort among Jewish intellectuals to continue the ideology of the moral superiority of Judaism and its role as undeserving historical victim while at the same time continuing the onslaught on the moral legitimacy of the West."

MacDonald's newest addition to this library, "Cultural Insurrections," was published last month by Occidental Press. The book is a compilation of his essays from the past few years, with topics ranging from "Stalin's Willing Executioners" to "What Makes Western Culture Unique." In the book's final essay -- "Can the Jewish Model Help the West Survive?" -- MacDonald embraces Jewish "hyper-ethnocentrism" as a strategy to fight the "onslaught" of immigration that he believes has increased ethnic competition for resources and threatens white European American culture.

"We already see numerous examples in which coalitions of minority groups attempt to influence public policy, including immigration policy, against the interests of the European majority. And we must realize that placing ourselves in a position of vulnerability would be extremely risky, given the deep sense of historical grievance harbored by many ethnic activists toward Europeans," MacDonald wrote.

"This is especially the case with Jews, and of course Jews have shown a tendency to become part of the elite in Western societies. We have recently seen reports in the press of religious Jews spitting on Christian symbols in Israel, thereby resurrecting an age-old Jewish practice. Indeed, hatred toward all things European is normative among a great many strongly identified Jews."

In fact, there were reports from Ha'aretz and Christianity Today in 2004 of a spate of spitting incidents in Jerusalem, in which ultra-Orthodox Jews allegedly assaulted Christians. However, spitting, like the blood libel that claims Jews ritually slaughter Christian children and bake their blood into matzah, is not and never has been an "age-old Jewish practice."

Most of the essays for "Cultural Insurrections" appeared in The Occidental Quarterly, a Mount Airy, Md.-based journal that "unapologetically defends the cultural, ethnic, and racial interests of Western European peoples." In 2004, the journal awarded MacDonald a $10,000 prize.

"MacDonald's 'racism' is nothing more than the idea that European-descended peoples have as much right as any other people, including Jews, to preserve their people and their culture," Virginia Abernethy, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University and, like MacDonald, an editorial adviser to The Occidental Quarterly, wrote in the book's foreword.



MacDonald's research rests on the assumption, based on interpretations of intelligence tests, that Jews are born with superior brains. The intelligence quotient sits on a sliding scale, with the average IQ at 100. The average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews, however, is a whopping 107 to 115, at the median higher than 70 percent of people, according to a few contested, though oft-cited, studies by Margaret E. Backman (1972), Julius S. Romanoff (1976) and Richard Lynn (2004).

The results have been dramatic: Freud, Einstein, Dylan. In the second half of the 20th century, Jews received 29 percent of the Nobel Prizes, while accounting for only 13 million of the world's 6 billion inhabitants -- about two-tenths of a percent.

"The profile of disproportionately high Jewish accomplishment in the arts and sciences since the 18th century, the reality of elevated Jewish IQ, and the connection between the two are not to be denied by means of data," Charles Murray, co-author of the controversial 1994 book, "The Bell Curve," which discussed the socioeconomic consequences of racial differences in intelligence, wrote in Commentary magazine last year. "And so we come to the great question: How and when did this elevated Jewish IQ come about?"

There is no accepted explanation. Some researchers have attributed higher IQ to medieval persecution, others to Jewish identity as the People of the Book and a few, maybe flippantly, to the fruits of being God's chosen.

But how researchers answer that same question depends heavily upon what school of thought they come from. Evolutionary psychologists like MacDonald credit better Jewish genes, while traditional biologists argue heightened IQ is the result of nurture, not nature.

"Jews may have been able to actualize their intelligence differently than other groups because we have an enormous, 5,000-year cultural history prizing learning and achievement," said Richard M. Lerner, a critic of MacDonald who directs the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University. "There is no innateness."

Few people would deny that Jews number strongly among the American elite, but very few American Jews want to talk about it. Among those who will is J.J. Goldberg, author of the authoritative 1996 book, "Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment."

"A lot of the politics of Jewish advocacy, minority advocacy in general, is victimhood," Goldberg said in an interview. "You can't do that if you are not actually a victim. There are some people who think Jews are powerless and others, like Kevin MacDonald, think that Jews control everything. In fact, the truth is somewhere in the middle."

Another journalist eager to discuss this topic is Philip Weiss, who writes the blog, Mondoweiss, and, unlike Goldberg, is an anti-Zionist who can be a brutal critic of his co-religionists. In December, MacDonald mentioned Weiss on his Web site, kevinmacdonald.net, where he links to his articles about Jews and Western culture and writes lengthy responses to critics. MacDonald praised Weiss as a fellow traveler. On his own blog, Weiss quickly rejected the embrace.

"He is trying to examine some important ideas. I just wish he wasn't racist about it," Weiss said in an interview, adding, "There was scrutiny of Jewish power in Central Europe when the Nazis arose. Therefore there is no ability to scrutinize Jewish power now because it makes you a Nazi. But I think that it is a legitimate intellectual and journalistic exercise to scrutinize Jewish power. I know MacDonald is engaged in that, and I respect that. But it is his generalizations about Jews that I find disturbing."

Broad brushing, a central criticism of MacDonald's work, is a professional hazard in evolutionary psychology, a field of study whose legitimacy has been fiercely contested. For its advocates, it is scientific research that applies Darwinian principles to human behavior. Opponents liken it to Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories, " which explained contemporary phenomena with fantastic ontological accounts that traced the maze backward.

Nevertheless, MacDonald was once a respected member of this community. His first book was fairly well reviewed, though the second less so and the third almost not at all. From 1995 to 2001, he served as the elected secretary-archivist of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. That organization's president would come to repudiate MacDonald as an "embarrassment."

"The theoretical viewpoint expressed in MacDonald's books stands in the most extreme contradiction to nearly every contentful core claim of evolutionary psychology," said John Tooby, co-director of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at UC Santa Barbara and a pioneer in the field.

Tooby's comment, which appeared on Slate.com, was prompted by MacDonald's decision on Jan. 31, 2000, to enter a British courtroom as an expert witness on Jewish behavior. On that day, MacDonald explained his belief that Jewish activists conspire against individuals who threaten the group interest, a model he alleged had been used to suppress, after publication, Irving's biography of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

"Yes, I think that anti-Semitism is, you know, a perennial problem, and Jewish organizations have developed very sophisticated ways of dealing with it," MacDonald said, in what ended up being a very short testimony. "This is one way of dealing with it. Anti-Semitism or any anti-Semitism is fought very, very intensely. They take it very seriously, and they do quite a job, obviously, of suppressing it, yes."

That statement surprised Irving, who didn't like being called an anti-Semite in court, and those few minutes have dogged MacDonald since. On his Web site and that of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a Holocaust-denying organizatin based in Newport Beach, MacDonald presented a lengthy explanation for why he agreed to testify.

He claimed that Lipstadt, following a pattern of Jewish activism, had "attempted to prevent the publication of writings conflicting with their constructions of reality" and exaggerated Irving's Holocaust denial. MacDonald also appealed to the academic importance of Irving's book, "Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich."

"He had access to original documents in the Soviet Union that nobody knew about. It was the kind of thing that any historian would have to read. And yet it was rescinded; they actually took it off the shelf. I thought that was ridiculous, just activism stuff," MacDonald added in an interview. "It was just suppression of free speech."

In Lipstadt's memoir, "History on Trial," she recalled the surprise of learning an expert on anti-Semitism would be a witness against her.

"I could not fathom," she wrote, "how a specialist on anti-Semitism would voluntarily testify on Irving's behalf, unless, I thought -- facetiously -- somehow he's for it."



Cal State Long Beach's Jewish studies program is located about 100 yards from Psych 417 on the second floor of a collection of history and sociology offices that looks 70 years old and smells older. The program is identified by a corkboard adjacent to the office of co-director Jeffrey Blutinger, who teaches Jewish intellectual and cultural history and post-communist Holocaust memorialization. Waiting outside, visitors are entertained by the printed phrases of "Jewish Buddhists" -- "If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?" and "Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis." -- and satirical headlines from a backdated issue of The Onion -- "Furher's Slaughter of Millions Blamed on Serious Self-Esteem Issues."

Blutinger's office is stuffed with six bookcases full of Jewish history, from Heinrich Graetz to pioneer Jews of the American West. And lumped on a pile of binders beneath the Encyclopedia Judaica lay first editions of MacDonald's first two books, checked out from the university library, and borrowed copies of "The Culture of Critique" and "Understanding Jewish Influence," an Occidental Quarterly monograph containing three MacDonald essays.

A former lawyer who joined the faculty four years ago, Blutinger has emerged as a leader in the battle against MacDonald, urging colleagues across campus to join the fight and authoring the Jewish studies' program statement denouncing MacDonald's research and the appended 18-page explanation.

"It's important that we take a stand," Blutinger said. "I teach the Holocaust every fall, and the thing I always end the course with is that, God willing, we will never have to make the choice people did back then, but all of us face the choice between what's right and doing what is easy or convenient. I tell them that I hope they will do what is right."

"If we are not willing to stand up when the risks are small," he continued, "why would we be willing to take a stand when the risks are big?"

Unpopular as MacDonald's views are, there appears little the university can do. He is protected by his status as a tenured professor, which he achieved in 1994, the year the first book in his "Culture of Critique" series was published. MacDonald also received a distinguished faculty award in 1995, and there is no record of any student complaint about anything MacDonald has said in 23 years, the administration, ADL and Hillel all reported.

Cal Sate Long Beach has been down this road before.

Nearly 30 years ago, Reinhard K. Buchner, a physics professor who from 1980 to 1983 was an editorial adviser for IHR's now-defunct Journal of Historical Review, drew protests from the ADL and Simon Wiesenthal Center. The journal carried such Buchner essays as "The Problem of Cremator Hours and Incineration Time," which argued, using time-space calculations, that the number of Jews who possibly could have been killed at Auschwitz has been exaggerated.

Buchner eventually returned to Germany, but a former colleague on the editorial board, Arthur R. Butz, remains in American academia. A long-time associate professor of engineering at Northwestern University, Butz was an early Holocaust denier. In 1976, he wrote "The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry."

Many other tenured scholars, from the lowest to highest levels of academia, use their position to share unsavory opinions. The issue is one of academic freedom, designed to encourage bold research by protecting faculty from the political whims of capricious administrators. And even as it promotes experimental research in every discipline, it also frequently puts universities in uncomfortable positions.

MacDonald has publicly warned Cal State Long Beach administrators, responsible for the second-largest student body (population: 37,000) in the country's largest university system (23 campuses scattered from Arcata to San Diego), that the school could expect a lawsuit if he was terminated without just cause.

This is why faculty statements have urged only that the university distance itself from his theories about Jews and his support for ethnostates that create a haven for European American interests. Each of the four departmental statements professed a belief in his freedom to write about whatever he wants.

"We wish to make it clear that we do not seek to impede Kevin MacDonald's First Amendment rights," proclaimed the statement from the anthropology department, released April 28. "However, just as he has rights, we have the right, if not the obligation, to denounce his writings on race, ethnicity and intelligence that promote intolerance, as not only inaccurate, but as professionally irresponsible and morally untenable."

In the second of two recent interviews, MacDonald said he is not a fan of anti-Semitism. But he also described his opinions on a Palestinian American TV news program in 2005 as "rational" anti-Semitism and has joked that being branded a Jew hater was a "badge of honor," the knee-jerk reaction of a scared Jewish establishment.

The chief concern over MacDonald's writings about Jews is directed at his fan base: white supremacists like Stormfront.org and Vanguard News Network -- whose motto is "No Jews. Just Right." The members of these online communities have become his loudest defenders, often in language that is as offensive as possible.

"So the goddam Kikes are getting their way yet again, putting the thumbscrews to a White scholar whose ass they are not worthy to lick.... At least this oppression proves that Prof. MacDonald's great work is hitting the scum hard," a Vanguard commenter wrote in February below a republished story about MacDonald from CSULB's student paper.

"How much more of this humiliation is our race going to take? How long before this motherf---ing plague of repulsive, hook-snouted ticks is given a real Zyklon fumigation, as opposed to the fairy tale one?"

MacDonald repudiated such rhetoric as "crazy stuff" but said he supports the ideology behind it.

"White people have legitimate ethnic interests. To the extent that that is all they believe, then we are on the same page," he said. "I don't like to use words like white supremacists. You could say that Koreans in Korea are Korean supremacists if they want to maintain their culture. It is kind of a loaded word; it is a politically charged word of the left, basically, to pathologize any sense of having an ethnicity and culture by people like me. I reject that."

"I certainly reject the tactics and the rhetoric of these people. It's very crude," MacDonald added. "But to the extent that David Duke is trying to advance a white ethnic interest and so on, I don't have any problem with that."

For more information, visit The God Blog.

The saga of Daphna Ziman and Rev. Lee

From: The Jewish Journal
"My entire reputation has been damaged," the Rev. Eric P. Lee said Monday, little more than a week after Jewish philanthropist Daphna Ziman sent an irate e-mail calling him an anti-Semite to her friends and members of the media.

"This has really taken its toll on me. I've taken the brunt, and it seems there is no question about whether Ms. Ziman inaccurately heard, and I was misinterpreted. It has just been really rough to me and my family," said Lee, president and CEO of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), in a phone interview while on a trip to Sacramento.

What Ziman says she heard in a keynote speech made by Lee, just after she was honored April 4 by a historically black fraternity for her work with foster children, was a rant that echoed one of the key strategies outlined in that century-old fabrication, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

"The Jews have made money on us in the music business, and we are the entertainers, and they are economically enslaving us," Ziman's e-mail quotes Lee saying.

Lee emphatically denies saying this or harboring such views. And after The Journal reported online April 9 that Ziman's e-mail was spreading through the community like wildfire, Lee sent an apology to Ziman for "any misunderstandings" and "unequivocally" denounced anti-Semitism.

The blaze, however, continued. At press time Tuesday, it loomed over a black-Jewish seder organized by the American Jewish Committee (AJCommittee) and the SCLC, among others, scheduled for April 17 at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, and it has forced leaders in both communities to acknowledge that more bond-building needs to occur.

"We need to build bridges not just with the African American community," said Stanley P. Gold, chairman of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, "but with all other ethnic and religious communities so we can avoid these kinds of flare-ups in the future."

The black-Jewish coalition was once a staple of Los Angeles politics, the formula that helped make Tom Bradley the city's first black mayor, but it dissipated over the years and now lies largely dormant. Nevertheless, Los Angeles synagogues and churches, albeit in small numbers, have continued working together.

"The relationship between the black community and the Jewish community is not only historic, but it is a necessity because both have, metaphorically, been to Egypt," said the Rev. Cecil "Chip" Murray, who led First AME Church for 27 years before retiring in 2004. "There have been tensions, yes," said Murray, who now teaches at USC. "Subgroups in the community create tensions. But over several centuries, Jews and blacks have bonded through the struggle for human dignity."

A native of Israel, Ziman and her husband, Richard, are major charitable and political contributors, locally and nationally, and are well known and respected by community leaders.

Ziman also is close with Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and has co-chaired fundraisers for her presidential campaign. Because Ziman made a connection in her e-mail between Lee and the now-notorious Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- blaming Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for not opposing Wright's anti-Semitic and anti-American tirades during two decades as a member of his church -- some are accusing Ziman of twisting an isolated incident for political gain.

"Daphna has a tendency to be over dramatic," said former Rep. Mel Levine, a friend of Ziman's who serves on Obama's Mideast team. "If the issue was dealing with the reverend, one could pick up the phone and talk to him and try to have a constructive dialogue -- rather than make an argument, however strange, that this has something to do with Barack Obama, when it had nothing to do with him."

Ziman denied such motivations in multiple interviews last week. She and Lee have not spoken since the fraternity gala, but last Friday, through the regional office of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Ziman sent Lee a letter thanking him for his apology.

"It is my intention for our communities to move towards a place of tolerance, mutual support, and unity," Ziman wrote. "I hope that we all rise above the negativity and take the responsibility to give our children the opportunity for a better future."

Lee, however, wasn't pleased.

"What I issued an apology on was her misunderstanding, not what I said. I didn't say anything wrong," he said.

The seeds of the conflict began on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who founded the SCLC and was a great friend of Jews and Israel.

As founder of Children Uniting Nations, a charity that helps foster kids through school, Ziman was to be honored with the Tom Bradley Distinguished Citizen Award at the annual regional conference for Kappa Alpha Psi. Other recipients included L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

After the awards were presented, Lee, the gala's keynote speaker, spurred the black community to ensure its children succeed, playing off the event's theme, "Leaving an Inheritance to Our Kids and Our Communities." Toward the end of his speech, Lee mentioned a conversation with a rabbi about rejuvenating the relationship between blacks and Jews.

That much is agreed on. What came next, however, can't be confirmed, and event organizers say no recording was made.

Whatever Lee said, Ziman fled the banquet hall in tears, creating enough of a stir that some fraternity members apologized afterward. Her guests followed her out, and three of them, including a friend and two of her employees, corroborated Ziman's story.

"He said that the African American community is not going to bridge any gaps because the Jewish community is responsible for the defamation of African Americans on the silver screen," said Branka Gonzales, Children Uniting's chief financial officer. "His feelings were that nothing is going to change until those things change, until the Jewish community stops its ways."

Others in attendance -- from a state assemblyman to a civil rights attorney to the event's organizers, who invited Ziman -- said they didn't listen carefully enough to the speech to confirm or deny her account.

"I vaguely remember hearing something about a conversation he had with a rabbi and dealing with the media," said the evening's emcee, Damon M. Brown, head of the Los Angeles alumni of Kappa Alpha Psi, which has also issued a general apology "where any speaker gives pain to another." "I don't recall hearing anything that was offensive to me, and then again, I'm not Jewish, so I don't know if there are some sensitivities one would have."

Curtis R. Silvers Jr., head of the fraternity's Western Province, also said he heard nothing offensive. Like Brown, he said he was preoccupied and paid Lee's keynote only intermittent attention.

Assemblyman Mike Davis, a Los Angeles Democrat who has been supported by the Zimans, said the same: "I can't say I was tuned into what he was saying, but I do know people make errors."

Ziman's e-mail, however, captured everyone's attention.

"After I spoke and thanked the fraternity and their members, Rev. Eric Lee, pres. and CEO of Southern Christian Leadership Conference of greater Los Angeles, was introduced as the key note speaker," Ziman wrote, not minding a few typos in her e-mail:

"He began his speech by thanking Jesus for Obama, who is going to be the leader of the world. He continued by referring to other leaders Like Dr. King, being that this was the moment of celebrating Dr. King's spirit on the anniversary of his assassination, and Malcolm X. It was right after the mention of Malcolm X that he looked right at me and started talking about the African American children who are suffering because of the JEWS that have featured them as rapists and murderers. He spoke of a Jewish Rabbi, and then corrected himself to say "What other kind of Rabbis are there, but JEWS". He told how this Rabbi came to him to say that he would like to bring the AA community and the Jewish community together." NO, NO, NO,!!!!" he shouted into the crowd, we are not going to come together."

The rabbi Lee mentioned was Steven Jacobs, rabbi emeritus for Kol Tikvah in Woodland Hills, who was not at the April 4 gala but attended a dinner with black and Jewish leaders last month at a home across from First AME. Jacobs said when he asked how blacks and Jews could restore their relationship to its level in the days before King was killed, Lee said a requisite should be an effort to change the portrayal of blacks on TV and in movies.

"He raised the question of the power in Hollywood and brought it up as something we ought to discuss," Jacobs said. "It wasn't condemnation, and I must tell you I don't believe he is an anti-Semite."

While vehemently disputing Ziman's account last week, Lee said he had, in fact, discussed Jewish media influence.

"Black leaders have gone to black entertainment leaders and said, 'Take the "N" word out of your music, and take the "B" word out of your music,'" Lee said in an interview. "And so, my thinking is -- in building a relationship, and reconnecting, as it were, like when Dr. King was alive in the civil rights movement -- is that our friends and allies in the Jewish community who have influence in the entertainment community can help us in changing the depiction of African Americans."

Ziman's e-mail soon moved across the globe, aided by dissemination on April 9 on StandWithUs' 50,000-member listserv. Jewish organizations in Los Angeles heard from folks in Chicago and New York and the South, from Israelis and Europeans. It got additional attention when the Los Angeles Times reported the "rift" a week after it began. Many who shared the e-mail added their own commentary.

"It's no secret: the black community is riddled with Jew-hatred," Robert J. Avrech, a screenwriter who is Orthodox, wrote when posting the e-mail to his well-trafficked blog, Seraphic Secret. "And with so many apologists for Jeremiah Wright on the left and in the Jewish community, well, Jew-hatred has found a comfortable home not just in the black community but in the Democratic party."

Larry Greenfield, California director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, added a similar sentiment in bolded letters when he forwarded Ziman's missive: "Anti Americanism, Anti Zionism, Anti Semitism mark today's left."

In responding to the incident, many community leaders have had to traverse a minefield.

The mayor, Councilman Bernard Parks and state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas had been present at the gala, but all left before Lee's address. In response to the controversy, Villaraigosa broadly condemned racism in any form and at any time. The AJCommittee and the ADL looked for a way to move forward regardless of what Lee had said.

"Unapologetic anti-Semitism has a much different feeling than this thing," said Amanda Susskind, the ADL's regional director, who has acted as a liaison between Ziman and Lee. "It doesn't mean that either side is right or wrong, or what he said or she said -- I wasn't there.... But I would say there is always room for more discussion, dialogue and sensitivity."

Ziman wants to organize a summit of rabbis and Christian ministers to discuss things that shouldn't be said "by people who are the voice of God" and spent last Thursday and Friday discussing this with The Federation's Gold and Uri Herscher, president and CEO of the Skirball Cultural Center, as well as friends in the black community.

"I'm hoping that the whole country will take notice, and no reverend will ever say anti-Semitic things in their sermons," Ziman said. "And I am hoping that the African American and Jewish communities will come together and understand that we have a lot more in common than differences and that we can help each other.

"I am more committed than ever to get members of the Jewish community to come with me into the inner city and the schools we work with. That way, the children will see that the Jewish community cares about them and wants to help. This is not about politics," she continued. "This is really about standing up to anti-Semitism."

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LA's defenders of Israel

From: The Jewish Journal

The notice shocked Karen Klein, head of Students for Israel at Cal State Northridge: Norman Finkelstein, the much-maligned scholar who wrote "The Holocaust Industry" and has spoken glowingly of Hezbollah, had been invited by the provost to lecture for three days this week at her school.

Klein had grown up down the street from campus, followed her father and sister in attending CSUN, and she was concerned about the implications of inviting Finkelstein, whose lectures she assumed would include rants against the legitimacy of the State of Israel.

"The campus is very apathetic, and in the years I've been at CSUN, this is the first anti-Israel event that has happened," said Klein, a senior who plans to move to Israel after she graduates. "I wanted to make sure I handled it in the right way, because I want this to be the first and last instance of anti-Semitic activity at our university."

First she contacted Hillel, with which Students for Israel is affiliated, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Then she called a group that since it began seven years ago in a Los Angeles living room has become an international leader in pro-Israel advocacy at colleges and universities.

StandWithUs national director Roz Rothstein jumped into action. She phoned Harry Hellenbrand, the provost and vice president who had invited Finkelstein, and explained the complaints her organization had. Hellenbrand wasn't surprised, and he asked StandWithUs to recommend speakers with a contrary perspective for a future lecture, a gesture he also made in a meeting with Klein. A list of 15 names was drawn up, and the drama was defused.

"That is exactly what we would want to have happen," said Hellenbrand, who said Finkelstein had been requested by faculty members who wanted to hear how his controversial scholarship had cost him tenure at DePaul University. "In a sense, our lives are made easier if we never have any controversial speakers at all. But that is not going to really happen. The ideal we have, but what rarely does happen, is that people come in and protest and write letters and ask us to support other speakers."

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StandWithUs was born from death, given life by the grisly discovery of two Israeli teens, Kobi Mandel and Yosef Ishran, in a cave outside of the West Bank settlement of Tekoa on May 9, 2001.

"A rock the size of a computer rested on Kobi's smashed skull," Time magazine reported. "Both bodies were covered with stones. Blood smeared the walls, and the dirt floor was muddy with it. When the searchers rolled the rocks away, they didn't see faces but unrecognizable pulp."

Two of the more than 1,000 Israeli deaths from the Second Intifada, then still in its infancy, the murders spurred a small group of Jews half a world away. A week and a half later, Roz and Jerry Rothstein convened at their home the first meeting of the Israel Emergency Alliance. The group of about 50 rabbis and Jewish leaders, across partisan and denominational lines, would soon take the name StandWithUs, centered around the Web site www.standwithus.com, and within a year would establish itself as a trailblazing grass-roots organization, one of a few redefining what it means to be pro-Israel.

The group's ambitions started small: arranging a meeting with editors at the Los Angeles Times to discuss what they felt was the paper's pro-Palestinian bias in covering the conflict. They then turned to education, focusing on how to inform college students and journalists about other views of Israel than what was being shown in American media and identifying anti-Israel rhetoric on college campuses.

"My mother, who was a survivor, always told me that the Holocaust, as she watched it grow, began in the schools and the colleges. The hatred took hold in the youth," Roz Rothstein said in an interview last week. "We have a motto at this organization that education is the road to peace."

StandWithUs has grown from a small group of volunteers meeting at the Rothsteins' home to an international organization with offices in Los Angeles, New York and three other U.S. locales as well as Europe and Israel. With a staff of about 40, a budget of $3 million and a number of printed materials -- including a 43-page glossy guide, "Israel 101," and flyers comparing Walt and Mearsheimer's book "The Israel Lobby" with "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" -- StandWithUs acts, as Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said, as an "intellectual Delta Force."

"StandWithUs may have started as a campus organization -- and they are our go-to group -- but their educational efforts have gone out to pre-university schools, to the community itself," said Gilad Millo, spokesman for the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles sponsor of the organization's annual conference, which this year included the Jerusalem Post's Palestinian affairs reporter, Khaled Abu Toameh, and Palestinian Media Watch's Itamar Marcus. "Their PR sense is brilliant."

StandWithUs, of course, has its critics, too, from those who think it is fighting the wrong battle -- hustling a pro-Israel information campaign instead of focusing on Jewish education -- to those who disagree with the organization's definition of "pro-Israel."

"It becomes a zero-sum game: If Israel did good, the other side must have done bad," said David N. Myers, a UCLA professor of Jewish history and director of its Center for Jewish Studies. "I would like to rethink the way we imagine pro-Israel to say it should also mean pro-Palestinian. The interests of Israelis and Palestinians meet at the point of freedom from occupation and self-determination for the Palestinians.... I find troubling the practice of defending every Israeli action. The fact of the matter is there is no country in the world whose every action is defensible. Robust practicing democracies undertake actions that merit scrutiny, Israel too. And that is not part of the mission of StandWithUs. What concerns me is the very polarized way they see the world, which is represented in the very name StandWithUs, which implies that anyone else is against us."

Most of the organization's resources are dedicated to providing materials and strategic support to college students, particularly at embattled campuses such as UC Irvine. But StandWithUs has received broad attention for two other efforts -- joining Dershowitz and others in opposing Finkelstein's bid for tenure at DePaul University and waging an ad war against a pro-Palestinian organization that placed posters in Washington's subways showing Israeli tanks.

The subway ads were indicative of StandWithUs' hard-line brand of truth telling. One of the posters showed an Arab toddler in the right arm of his father, who was wearing fatigues and a bandana and was resting an automatic rifle on his left shoulder. "This Child Could Grow Up to Be A" the poster stated, offering three options: doctor, teacher or terrorist. The terrorist box contained a checkmark.

Such pro-Israel advocacy didn't exist in Los Angeles before StandWithUs came along, and the organized Jewish community has rallied around it. The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles has given a number of small grants along the order of the $10,000 gift for November's "Israel in Focus" conference, and the Jewish Community Foundation has given $305,000, including a Cutting Edge grant of $210,000 in 2006 to provide "teaching tools and classroom materials for public high school teachers to use to effectively teach about Israel."

"Through this breakthrough work, StandWithUs strengthens the fabric of our local Jewish communities by instilling knowledge and understanding of Zionism and Israel," Marvin I. Schotland, president and CEO of The Foundation, said. "It's tantamount to a two-for-one payoff for a supporting organization such as ours."

But this support has also raised questions. While StandWithUs professes to be a non-partisan advocate on behalf of Israel -- one whose board bears many shades of the political spectrum and refrains from commenting on the policies of the Israeli government -- progressive Jewish leaders consider the organization to be their ideological inverse.

"A number of very good progressive Jewish organizations have applied, in some cases repeatedly, for funding from The Foundation, and they have been denied," said Daniel Sokatch, executive director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA). "This would seem to suggest that there is particular support in the Jewish Community Foundation for the brand of Israel advocacy that is put forth by StandWithUs, which is a particularly hard-line, conservative version."

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The seminal moment in the transformation of pro-Israel advocacy occurred in the summer of 1993, when the Oslo accords were finalized, and then signed, on the White House lawn.

"The Jewish community essentially had trained itself in one direction and was being asked to turn around immediately," said Michael Berenbaum, an adjunct professor of theology at American Jewish University. "It had advocated that the enemy was the PLO, and the question was, if all of the sudden [the PLO] are friends, they felt betrayed."

It was at this moment that the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) broke a decades-old code and criticized the Israeli government. While most Jewish American organizations got behind the landmark peace agreement, ZOA President Morton A. Klein predicted the accords would not only fail, but that they would empower Yasser Arafat and endanger Israelis.

"They were completely wrong and we were completely right," Klein said last week. "Peace is impossible."

Seven years and 300 murdered Jews after Oslo, the Second Intifada broke out, rupturing the ground beneath American Jewry. Within one more year, 19 Muslim terrorists would hijack four American planes and inflict the worst domestic attack in U.S. history; Jews and the West found a common enemy in the Muslim world, and the crack in the Jewish community severed into two pieces -- hawks and doves, hardliners and peaceniks, right and left.

In Los Angeles, the American Jewish Congress had dissolved its local office in 1998 and reformed the following year as the PJA, a liberal organization concerned mostly with domestic issues related to social justice. But the AJCongress reopened here in 2000, bearing little resemblance to its former self.

"People who believed that we could have peace with the Palestinians were shaken out of their misguided view and realized they had no desire for peace," said Gary P. Ratner, the group's western region executive director. "Their goal was what they stated openly: The destruction of Israel, whether through the violence of groups like Hamas or through negotiations, that will weaken Israel. I think some of us woke up to the fact that Oslo was a disaster and the peace process would only lead to the destruction of Israel."

The Jewish state was under attack with no partner for peace; the old model of resolving conflict through compromise had failed. With climbing anti-Israel rhetoric on American campuses and the perception that international media had joined liberal Christians in taking up the Palestinian cause, the hardliners quickly captured the upper hand among Jewish groups in the debate on what it meant to be pro-Israel.

"It's a painful moment in Jewish life, because there isn't a place for honest and open discourse," Gerald Bubis, founding director of the Irwin Daniels School of Jewish Communal Service at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, told this paper in a 2002 article titled "The Silencing of the Left?" "People can have very strong differences of opinion about where to go and how to resolve things, but that discourse does not have a place right now. Rather, there is a vituperative argumentation and excoriation."

Amid this climate, major Jewish organizations slid into the shadows, abdicating their leadership.

"Whatever they said would upset somebody," Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, said. "As a result, Jews who were frustrated, who wanted to defend Israel and didn't really know how or didn't have the ability, they gravitated toward The David Project and its sort of counterpart in StandWithUs."

The David Project first made headlines in 2004 with a documentary, "Columbia Unbecoming," which alleged faculty intimidation of pro-Israel students at the Ivy League school.

"We have lost a generation. The Jewish leadership failed to understand the situation we were in. We thought that people who were our enemies would be thugs yelling 'kike,' instead of soft-spoken college professors saying Israel is an apartheid state," Charles Jacobs, president of the Boston-based David Project, said. "In the West today, most people don't hate the Jews because we are Christ-killers and we are racial vermin, but they hate Jews because they see us supporting what has been unfairly described as the cruelest of nations."

Just how serious the crisis on college campuses is, how deeply Israel is being vilified, how under attack Jewish students feel, is a source of great debate. Many schools, including USC, UCLA and CSUN, seem mostly immune from the anti-Israel rhetoric 51 weeks of the year. But then Palestinian Awareness Week draws tension between Muslims and Jews at UCLA, or a controversial speaker is invited to any one of those universities and concern crests. More troubling are campuses plagued by frequent protests against Israel, like one at Concordia University in Montreal six years ago that resembled a pogrom.

"There isn't as much happening on campuses as people think," said Amanda Susskind, the ADL's regional director. "But where it is happening, it is happening worse than people can imagine."

Among the schools most afflicted by Israel-bashing has been UC Irvine, where students frequently march against Israel holding signs that say "Smash the Jewish State" and "Israel, the 4th Reich." Several times a year since the outbreak of the Second Intifada, radicals like Muhammad Al-Asi and Amir Abdel Malik Ali have been invited by the Muslim Student Union to praise suicide bombers as "freedom fighters" and accuse "the Zionist-controlled media" of distorting the human-rights record of "the apartheid State of Israel," a country that is "a monkey on the American back" and "a cancerous presence."

"There is great racism against Jewish students on college campuses within the Muslim student organizations. The speakers, the programs, the handouts are all indicative of a deep hatred of Israel and, in my opinion, of a very deep racist ideology," Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, associate rabbi of UC Irvine's interfaith center, said. "I have been -- just this last week actually -- the victim of that racism by Muslim students at UC Irvine. I was heckled when I was trying to speak to a group of high school students about the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was on Thursday; it was on campus. There is just a wave of hatred and racism directed at Jewish students by Muslim students. It literally permeates everything they do."

Anti-Israel attacks have appeared across the country, most often where unaffiliated speakers have been invited by pro-Palestinian campus groups. (A 44-minute StandWithUs documentary, "Tolerating Intolerance," focuses on a handful of these speakers, including Al-Asi, Malik Ali and Finkelstein.) The crisis, however, is not endemic. And even at large universities where the problem seems to be acute -- places like San Francisco State a few years ago -- many Jewish students report no problems.

"Even at San Francisco State and even in the heat of this," said Seth Brysk, who was the Hillel director there and is now executive director of the American Jewish Committee's L.A. chapter, "I had Jewish students say to me, 'Why are you making such a big deal about this? I've never had a problem with anti-Semitism.'"

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Roz Rothstein doesn't believe an unstoppable crisis is racing across academia. But she thinks a pro-Palestinian agenda in favor of the end of the Jewish state is simmering below the surface. And she wasn't willing to wait until it was too late.

"We are not the victims, and we do not want to be the victims. We are strong enough to say 'never again,'" Rothstein said. "I didn't create bus bombings. I was minding my own business before 2000. I was raising a family; I wasn't working for the Museum of Tolerance or the ADL. This isn't about anti-Semitism. This is about radical Islam creating a society of little fundamentalists that have radical intentions."

Rothstein, 55, sat in her undecorated L.A. office on the second-floor of an industrial building, a location the group doesn't disclose for fear of violence. A handful of boxes were stacked on top of, and in front of, three large bookcases and a smaller one filled with multiple copies of "The Israelis" by Donna Rosenthal, "Exodus" by Leon Uris, "Myths & Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict" by Mitchell Bard and "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jewish History & Culture." These aren't part of Rothstein's personal collection -- that shelf includes Steven Emerson's "American Jihad" and Jimmy Carter's "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" -- but are used to seed libraries with books that positively represent Israel -- more than 3,500 locations so far.

Her focus is divided between disseminating pro-Israel information in the Western world and opposing what she called "the hate training of the Palestinian children." Strongly influenced by the fact that both parents and her stepfather were survivors, Rothstein draws parallels between indoctrination of Arab children and the Hitler Youth.

"How did they do it? They did it with the same cartoons and hate training that we see today in Arab countries," she said, using her computer to log onto standwithus.com. She pulled up a flyer comparing anti-Semitic cartoons in Nazi Germany with those found in Arab papers -- a giant spider bearing the Magen David, a child being slaughtered in ritualistic baking, a grotesque Jew being kicked off a cliff.

"How do you get people to hate? Use things that were successful. The Nazis got Europe to hate the Jews," she said. "So they use their model and they do it all over."

Rothstein is not only the public face of StandWithUs, but its core energy. She started the organization with her husband and Esther Renzer, a like-minded woman who serves as the board president, and is widely credited with its meteoric rise, something admired by both critics and supporters.

"Their success, in no small part, is a testament to the dynamic leadership of Roz Rothstein, who is a creative and entrepreneurial executive, not to mention zealous in her love and advocacy of Israel," said Schotland, of the Jewish Community Foundation.

She is motivated by a deep conviction that avoiding conflict is the worst strategy for the Jewish people. In summer 2006, Rothstein joined the campaign to strip an L.A. County Commission on Human Relations award from Maher Hathout, a founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who had called Israel an "apartheid state" run by "butchers." Though Hathout got to keep the award after a month of contentious public hearings and news articles probing the Egyptian immigrant's past, Rothstein said she was proud of their efforts.

"If you Google him, then you will not see that he received an award he shouldn't have, but that he was a controversial guy who attended Hezbollah rallies and told Muslims they should not communicate with Israel," Rothstein said.

"Two years ago," she said, "the Presbyterian Church nearly voted to pull $7 billion in investments out of Israel -- $7 billion. Do you know why that happened? Neglect. Our neglect of the defamation of Jews or Israel will never amount to anything good."

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Read Brad A. Greenberg's The God Blog for the latest on Finklestein's local reception committee -- including the Jewish Defense League.

Jews and the great election of '08

From: The Jewish Journal

Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein had barely slept in days.

A senior at Beverly Hills High School, he'd spent long hours rallying support for Barack Obama, and as the results from the Iowa caucuses poured in, as fellow Obama supporters packed the presidential candidate's California campaign office in Koreatown, Spitzer-Rubenstein turned jubilant, his enthusiasm mashing together with exhaustion into euphoria.

"Yeah!" he shouted, jumping up and down in a corner where he was hawking T-shirts, bumper stickers and buttons for the Illinois senator. "Obama! Obama! Obama!" he chanted with the crowd. "Fired up! Ready to go! Fired up! Ready to go! Let's go change the world!"

Then his cell phone rang. It was one of the many high school volunteers he oversees as the L.A. teen director.

"Hi, Amy," Spitzer-Rubenstein, 17, said. "So it looks like we did it. It's awesome. You helped make this happen. Yeah, every little bit matters."

One down, 49 to go, which means many more hours of lost sleep for Spitzer-Rubenstein. Far from alone in volunteering for the candidate he thinks holds the key to a better America, Jews are planted throughout most of the presidential front-runners' campaigns, from top advisory levels to grassroots street teams.

So much excitement hasn't surrounded a presidential primary season in 40 years, not since Bobby Kennedy was in the race. And for the first time in at least as long, California's primary will matter. Until now, only six states have cast their votes for party nominations, with Florida's vote Tuesday terminating the campaigns of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. Maine's residents will vote Friday and then on Feb. 5, 22 states, including California, Illinois and New York, will go to the polls on what has been dubbed "Super-Duper Tuesday" and "Tsunami Tuesday." Meanwhile, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an Independent and a Jew, continues to play presidential footsie, presumably waiting to see how the field thins.

With the contest still up for grabs -- three Republicans and two Democrats still with a realistic chance of getting their party's nod -- Tuesday's race is expected to determine the ballot for the general election. And already quite a few Jews have been writing checks, working phones or simply spreading their candidate's gospel in an effort to court the deciding votes.

Julie Shapiro, a young lawyer for Universal and volunteer for Hillary Clinton, last week started an effort to get other female lawyers fired up about the New York senator. David Slomovic, a father of three, spent recent Thursday evenings opening his commercial real estate office for phone banking for Giuliani. And Dr. Joel Geiderman, co-chair of the emergency medicine department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and vice chair of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, has spent his free time encouraging lifelong Democrats to switch sides.

"The two visions of America the parties offer could not be any more different," Geiderman said.

Jews in real estate and Hollywood were quick to get involved, too -- support had been strongest for Clinton and Obama, Giuliani and John McCain -- endorsing early, opening their homes for fundraisers and crisscrossing the country in support.

"We took our family holiday in Iowa this year," said Sony Pictures Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton, who hosted Obama at his home last summer and went with his wife and kids to the Jan. 3 caucuses.

Tonight, MGM chief Harry Sloan will host his second fundraiser for McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona. Obama will attend one at the Avalon. And Hillary Clinton will be at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for a fundraiser organized by the likes of Peter Lowy, Haim Saban, Barbra Streisand and Daphna and Richard Ziman.

"All of us believe this is an absolutely critical election," said Michael Berenbaum, an adjunct professor of theology at American Jewish University. "The last four years of the Bush administration have been disastrous. If we don't get ourselves squared away, it could be the end of the American Century and the end of the way the American Jewish community has been American in this era.

"We are voting as if our lives and futures depend upon it. Not because we fear someone is going to come out and kill us, but because we fear that if we don't get this right, our children and their children will not enjoy the privileges this generation has enjoyed as Americans -- the economic opportunity, the prosperity, the education, all of those elements that have characterized our existence and our flourishing. After Florida in 2000, everybody knows that every vote absolutely counts."



Republican or Democrat? There used to only be one real answer to that. Jews believed in three velts -- Yiddish for "world": die velt (this world), yene velt (the next world) and Roosevelt. And since the New Deal, American Jews have identified so strongly with the Democratic Party that supporting its policies, particularly its domestic agenda, has been part of being Jewish.

"Like most Brooklyn Jews, I was raised a Democrat, voted Democrat for years and years, and believed, absolutely, that Republicans were evil," screenwriter Robert J. Avrech wrote a few years ago for the Jewish Press in an article titled "Help! I'm a Hollywood Republican." "That's what we were taught from birth, right? Democrats are for the poor and the oppressed, and Republicans are for rich people and big corporations. Who questioned such sophisticated political analysis?"

An increasing number of Jews seem to be. Though the proportion voting for a Republican presidential candidate has never been as high as it was in 1956 for President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- 40 percent, according to "Jews in American Politics," (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003) -- the percentage has increased in each presidential election since 1992, going from 11 percent to 16 percent to 19 percent, until finally 24 percent of Jews voted to reelect President Bush in 2004.

"Whether it is the economy or the environment or education or healthcare, we think we are bringing new and fresh ideas to the conversation," Larry Greenfield, state director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said in opening remarks during a debate at Congregation Ner Tamid of South Bay with the leader of Democrats for Israel. "There is a broadening of the Jewish conversation as some of your kids and grandkids come home from college and say, 'Mom, Dad, I'm a Republican.'"

Greenfield has been traveling up and down the state trying to convince voters that Republicans really are good for the Jews. He's won some converts over the past few years, growing his membership from about 1,500 to 8,000. And the key selling point, the policy issue he repeats over and over, is that Republicans just do national defense better. That means, he argues, we will be safer, and Israel will be safer, with a Republican in the White House.

"There are obviously some lifelong Democrats who are not going to shift," he said as he sat down for an interview after the debate. "But I hear all the time that they could vote for a Republican."

"McCain is the only Republican I could vote for," Marilyn Kritzer, one of those lifelong Democrats and the organizer of the debate and luncheon, chimed in.

Certainly there has been enthusiasm in the Jewish community for McCain, a hawk on defense who has a long record of stiff support for Israel. He earned the endorsement of Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), a centrist with foreign policy views similar to his own, and quite a bit of fantasizing was indulged in December at the Orthodox Union's West Coast Torah Convention when talk show host Michael Medved entertained the possibility of a McCain-Lieberman ticket.

Other Republican Jews have gotten behind the candidacy of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whom RJC took on a tour of Israel last year.

"Most Republicans care about shared values, and he has very strong values," Charlie Spies, CFO and general counsel for Romney for President, said of the Mormon candidate. "Whether you are an Orthodox Jew, conservative Catholic or evangelical, we have much more in common than divides us."

But the person that was being spoken of most effusively by California's Republican Jewish leadership -- though not officially because they don't endorse until after the primaries -- was Giuliani.

"I've saved the best for last," Greenfield said during the debate at Ner Tamid. "Rudy Giuliani, who has been fighting Palestinian terrorism for 30 years. He is the most hands-on, most closely aligned-with-the-Jewish-community candidate I have ever seen."
Giuliani ended his campaign Wednesday afternoon, a few hours before the Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, and threw his support behind McCain. Republican Jews were drawn to Giuliani largely because of his performance on Sept. 11, 2001, and his subsequent tough talk on terror. Of the remaining Republicans, McCain is the closest comparison and should have control of the Republican Jewish vote.

"People don't want to talk about Sept. 11, but that image is burned into my mind, and I remember what he did and what he said when all hell broke loose in New York," said David Slomovic, who changed his voter registration in December and volunteered for Giuliani's campaign. "I remember watching with my wife him speaking, staying calm, giving it to us straight. I remember him ensuring New Yorkers that New York would be there tomorrow, that they would be strong, and they would be an example to Americans and the world that they would not be defeated by terrorism. He was the voice of America to me."

Slomovic sat at his desk in an office surrounded by pictures of his family, Giuliani promotions and a poster of the movie "300." "I've got three beautiful kids, a beautiful wife, and that's why I'm here: The future."

He is exactly the type of voter the RJC was trying to convert: a guilt-filled liberal who was fiscally conservative and, above all else, shares their opinion that Islamic terror is the most important issue of our time.

Slomovic wore a light blue shirt rolled to the sleeves, with a white long-sleeve shirt running down to his wrists, and the baggy eyes of a long day. He was polite, if a bit stiff, as he dialed bit by bit through a ream of phone lists.

Once the frontrunner in California, Giuliani watched his popularity plummet. Only 13 percent of Republicans planned to vote for him, according to an L.A. Times/CNN/Politico poll released this week. McCain, who is leading the pack in California, has 39 percent support, making Slomovic's cold calls that much more frustrating.

"Hey David, what if it's 'I'm not a Republican?" a volunteer named Gary Klein asked.

"That's not a sin," Slomovic responded.

Another volunteer disagreed. "Tell him, 'F--- you,'" he said, and then left for the night.





It is an unusually personal story for politics, but it's one that indebted Daphna Ziman to then-first lady Hillary Clinton.

In the early 1990s, Ziman was touring a homeless mission when a 5-year-old girl captivated her. She had been abused, and after the girl was treated at a hospital, she was put in Ziman's foster care. But then a parental hearing was held. "The judge said he was going to give the crack mom parenting classes and then return this little girl. I said, 'Over my dead body.'"

Ziman decided to appeal to everyone she knew in Washington, and even some she didn't. One of those people was Hillary Clinton, who advised Ziman on what she should do. In a Talmudic sense, it felt to Ziman, who adopted the girl as her daughter, as if Clinton had saved the world.

"She didn't know me from a bar of soap," said Ziman, who was inspired by the process to found Children Uniting Nations. "When people ask me, 'How come you can give so much and do so much?' -- If the first lady of the United States, who is so overloaded everyday, can do that to save one child, it is the least I can do."

A decade and a half later, this debt has translated into trips across the country to promote Clinton among various Jewish communities and hosting discussions at her home between members of Los Angeles' Jewish community and Madeleine Albright, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo). (Bill Clinton is expected to make a trip out, too, Ziman said.)

"I've had to take a huge chunk of time to support Hillary, and I am happy to do that for two reasons: One is Israel and the other is children at risk," she said. "That is it. I honestly and truly to the depth of my being believe I can trust in the future of my children if Hillary is going to be in the president's office," she said. "It's the most important election, and the most indescribable and the most incomprehensible election, we've ever been through."

Clinton had a 17-point lead over Obama in the L.A. Times poll. Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina, was running in third. His support from the Jewish community had been much smaller than Clinton's and Obama's.

"The biggest problems I have with Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama don't have to deal with their policies and positions. It's about electability," Coby King, a public affairs professional who held a fundraiser for Edwards at his West Valley home last summer, said before his candidate dropped out Wednesday.

"But should Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama be the nominee, I will be enthusiastic about their candidacy and do whatever I can to make sure they are elected president of the United States. More than the differences between any of the Democratic candidates, the country has a huge choice between Democrats and Republicans, and we obviously need a huge change in direction."

Clinton and Obama have proven so popular among Jews because of what they represent.

Clinton is not only a Clinton -- a plus for many Jews -- she is also the first viable female candidate for the presidency. But Obama also would be a barrier-breaker, and in many ways he personifies what so many Jews fought so hard for during the Civil Rights movement. A Kenyan father and a Kansan mother, of humble means and superior education, Obama's story is a familiar one.

"The options here are unbelievably forward from where we've ever been. And that is a great thing," said Abby Leibman, a management consultant who co-founded the California Women's Law Center and is a Clinton fan. "But I don't have the same excitement about an African American man because I am not one."

Supporters of each senator have been casting the other as a bad choice for Israel. The rhetoric, however, appears to be political fear mongering.

"What I have seen with Clinton and Obama maybe more than the others -- though I don't want to say there isn't an appreciation with the others -- is a desire to see a peace process that is based on a premise that Israel can't be the one that is always taking the initiatives," said former Ambassador Dennis Ross, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who has given both candidates advice.

"Israel can't be the only one to compromise. Palestinians have to live up to the commitments they've made, and the Arab world has to assume responsibility and can't just sit on the sideline. They are both in favor of having a much more active peace process, which I am. But if you have an active peace process, it has to be grounded in reality."

Obama, though, has faced another challenge. An Internet rumor campaign has accused him of being an uncover Muslim and a veiled anti-Semite. He's taken these attacks so seriously that Monday, even after a number of Jewish organizational leaders signed an open letter condemning the smears and seven Jewish senators penned another, Obama held a conference call with reporters from Jewish publications to reiterate his support for Israel and his affinity for American Jewry.

"My strong and deep commitment and connection to the Jewish community should not be questioned," he said.

It's anybody's guess how the Jewish vote here will split between the two. But there are certainly plenty of people trying to shape it.

In November, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) endorsed Clinton. Three weeks ago, his colleague, Rep. Adam Schiff, (D-Pasadena) opted for Obama. And former Congressman Mel Levine, who left office 15 years ago, joined Schiff at a City Hall press conference, adding his name to the growing list of supporters.

"I must confess that I have become emotionally excited about the prospect of a President Obama and what that means to America's image throughout the world," said Levine, who has been working with the senator's foreign policy team. "This man is a uniter. He reaches out, and he clearly respects the views of people on all sides of an issue, and that is critically important in intractable conflicts, such as Israel-Palestine."





"I should be a poor American and a poor Catholic alike if I injected religious discussion into a political campaign." Alfred E. Smith, the great New Yorker, wrote those words little more than 80 years ago as he campaigned for the presidency amid rumors and slanders that his Catholic worldview would imperil Americans. How the times have changed.

In 2008, presidential candidates not only inject religious language into their campaigns, but also at times seem to fully infuse their stump speeches with it, "thumpin' it," as Jacques Berlinerblau dubs the strategy in a book by that name (Westminster John Knox, 2007).

While Joe Lieberman was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in 2000 for going overboard in his references to the God of Abraham, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister who in January said we need "to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards," certainly seems to be missing the mark with Jewish voters.

Zero percent -- that's a bagel -- of New York Jews favored Huckabee over the other Republican front-runners in a mid-January poll by Siena College. And a completely unscientific search here in Los Angeles didn't yield better results. (Huckabee's press office did not respond to a request for info on any Jewish volunteers in California; Greenfield also was unaware of any supporters.) The only prominent Jew who has backed Huckabee was Bill Kristol, the neoconservative scion and Weekly Standard editor who spoke effusively of the man from Hope in his first weekly column for The New York Times.

"Jews have been conditioned to play it close to the vest and keep their religious sentiments to themselves," said Berlinerblau, an associate professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University. "It is so viscerally in our cultural DNA, I don't think we are very comfortable with public faith-and-values talk. Especially when it is coming from a Christian spokesperson."

Thanks to Bush's success at monopolizing the vote of evangelical Christians by casting conservatism as God's Ol' Party, religious incantations has become an integral part of presidential campaigning. Complete with faith strategists, spiritual language this year has been mixed into the Democrats' stump speeches, resulting in newspaper profiles that focus specifically on what Methodism means to Clinton and just exactly what religion Obama practices. ("I never practiced Islam," Obama said Monday. "I was raised by my secular mother. I have been a member of the Christian religion and an active Christian."). Still, the growth in God-talk has missed the point for many liberal Jews.

"Progressives need to find a way to refocus religious issues, and what better time to do that then election season, when the whole world is watching?" Margie Klein, an editor of a new book that is designed to start a movement, "Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice" (Jewish Lights, 2007). "We need to reframe the debate so that when people think how should they vote, they don't think, 'Morality. OK. Anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage.' Which we know is not correct."

It is clear that progressive politics don't mean as much to Jews as they did in the early days on the Lower East Side. Jewish politics have broadened, and, like most Americans, Jews are primarily worried about the economy. Really worried. Their next ranking political concerns are healthcare reform, the war in Iraq and the threat of terrorism, according to the American Jewish Committee's 2007 survey.

Jews contribute more heavily to political campaigns than other Americans on average; they vote with greater regularity and, largely by accident, are clustered in a few big states -- California and New York -- and a few crucial swing states -- Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio. That's why federal politicians often are quick to reach out to the Jewish community. Obama, Clinton, Giuliani and Romney have this connection built in by virtue of the locales they have represented or still do; McCain has a much smaller Jewish constituency in Arizona, but is appreciated for his years of supporting Israel, which is, for most, the key foreign policy issue.

More campaign talk has been directed Israel's way during the past 60 years than any other small strip of coastal desert. So it surprised Amanda Susskind, regional director of the ADL, when, at a recent campaign forum at The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, none of the candidates' representatives needed the extra time she offered them to talk about plans for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians and promises for protecting the survival of the Jewish state. They stuck to their allotted 90 seconds, giving equal time to the discussion of the future of Israel as to hate crimes and healthcare.

And that is because there really is no discussion on the campaign trail. Save each party's fringe candidate -- Dennis Kucinich on the left and Ron Paul on the right -- there is substantial support not only for Israel, but also for its right to defend itself against hostile neighbors and to negotiate a peace agreement that does not relent too much, or too prime, territory. Even the Democrats have talked tough, with Clinton saying Jerusalem should not be divided and Obama authoring the Iran Sanctions Act.

"All of the frontrunners, both Republicans and Democrats, are extremely supportive of Israel," said Howard Welinsky, former chair of The Federation's Jewish Community Relations Committee. "I don't think if you took a magnifying glass you can perceive any significant difference on the important issues of a two-state solution, supporting Israel's security, dealing with Iran -- whether it is McCain, Giuliani, Clinton, Obama or Edwards -- they are all extremely supportive of Israel. They are all very knowledgeable; they care. So then it becomes: What are the differences?"