November 5, 2009 | 8:03 pm

JWW in Congo:  A Stark Contrast

Posted by JewishJournal.com

by John Fishel

Yesterday we drove east from Kigali to visit the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, an extraordinary program established by Jewish philanthropist Ann Heyman as a response to helping Rwanda move forward following the horrifying genocide of the early 1990’s.  While visiting the Genocide Memorial in Kigali earlier in the day, we stood in a room filled with snapshots of hundreds of men, women and children who were murdered.  But we cannot forget that thousands of youngsters survived, many without any family or with families that lost mothers or fathers.  Agahozo is an effort to work with these survivors now, in their later teenage years, by bringing them to the Shalom Youth Village to live, to study and to grow as future young leaders whose potential will be essential as Rwanda struggles to recover from its tragic history.  We visited as the program was completing its first year.  A class of 125 teens, both young men and women selected for the vulnerability of their situation and potential, had completed the inaugural year and with the exception of two, were away on a school holiday.  The two still in residence had no surviving relatives to visit.

The visit reflected the potential to implement a vision and with extraordinary collaborators, make a difference in the aftermath of the unthinkable.  We had the privilege of meeting with Alain, a young Rwandan in his early thirties who, after a successful career in business in other parts of the world had returned to give back.  As the director of the Shalom Youth Village he showed us the facilities, but more, he demonstrated the difference a dedicated staff person can make in fulfilling Ann Heyman’s vision.  His commitment to the potential of his young charges was overwhelming.  It was clear that he had brought a range of social entrepreneurial skills to an important human service operation that makes a difference.

Agahozo is modeled on a successful Israeli program, Yemin Orde, familiar to many of us.  The best of Yemin Orde and other programs aimed at maximizing the potential of youth have been forged into a Rwandan reality.  It was inspirational to talk briefly with the other teaching staff.  Nir, an Israeli, discussed with Alain how to assure that while encouraging the young residents, they also taught them to believe that “the sky is the limit.”

Today we drove from Kigali to the Democratic Republic of Congo.  The drive was among the most beautiful territory I ever had the opportunity to see. What struck me as we drove was the vast number of people walking along the roads in the rural areas, which make up the majority of this nation. I couldn’t help but reflect on the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide when the images in the news focused on hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsi refugees moving along these same roads.

Crossing the border reflected the difference between a nation that has addressed its past and is building its future, and one that has not. Of course, enormous challenges remain in Rwanda. With the reestablishment of a rule of law and an effort to encourage forgiveness between survivors and perpetrators built into the society, crossing into Congo could not have provided a starker difference. Entering the town of Goma, where wars continue to rage, atrocities continue in the outlying areas and refugees flock for safety, the absence of normalcy and rule of law, and the lack of respect for human life resonated. The next week will provide us with the ability to consider how Jewish World Watch can involve itself in an area of the world where 5.5 million lives have been wasted and the world remains unaware and unconcerned.

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November 5, 2009 | 4:59 pm

JWW in Congo: A Cause for Hope?

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by Diana Buckhantz

As we drive through plush verdant fields and towering mountains on our way to Kigali and the Congo border, we pass men, women and children walking and riding bicycles.  The scenery is spectacular. Children wave with bright smiles.  The women carry baskets and packages on their heads.  Life seems easy, slow, peaceful.

This scene is in sharp contrast to the images we saw at the Rwandan genocide museum yesterday.  There we read about and saw pictures of such atrocities—the decimation of millions, mass killing of children, brutalization of women—such hatred, such loss.

The museum also profiles some of the other genocides of the 20th century: Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, and Bosnia.  What is startling to me is that in every case there were warnings that a destruction of a people had started and in every case the world did not come forward until it was too late.

But there was also hope in the museum.  The goal of the museum is “never again.  It hopes to educate so that these genocides will never again be permitted.

Rwanda is a country that is transforming itself, economically and politically.  It has had a stable government for many years and is trying to reinvent its tourism industry.  But most importantly, it is transforming itself on a spiritual and emotional level.  Rwandans are clearly engaged in a process of reconciliation and healing.  For example, there is a program whereby perpetrators are brought to justice.  In this case justice means being required to apologize to the families of their victims who are then empowered to forgive.  The hope is that with forgiveness comes change for future generations.

I was struck by the lack of bitterness in the people we met and their sense of optimism for and hope in the future.  As we approach Congo, my apprehension rises.  My guess is that our visit in Congo will not engender such good feelings. Perhaps, however, we will be able to carry the hope we found here in Rwanda to our experiences in the Congo.  We shall see…

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November 5, 2009 | 11:05 am

JWW in Congo: It’s Not Academic Anymore

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Posted by Naama Haviv

I knew I shouldn’t have gone into the room about children long before I stepped inside. It’s the last room of the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center here in Rwanda, and it’s not like the kind young man that greeted us at reception didn’t give me fair warning that it was coming. I was already in tears – the memorial is intensely powerful and personal – and I knew it would push me over the edge.

No little boy’s last words should be “Mama, where should I run to?” I didn’t want to know about the little girls, sisters, best friends, who shared a doll and were murdered together. I didn’t want to know about the brother who was a mama’s boy and the sister who was a daddy’s girl who were shot as if they were not, somehow, brimming with humanity and potential.Bullet Holes

I don’t want to know these things. There is no way of making these stories academic, of turning back to my books and explaining away this intensely personal brutality with theory and analysis. And that’s the way I operate – making the intimacy of genocide either academic or actionable. I’ve been doing this – studying genocide, analyzing genocide, trying to understand how to prevent genocide – for thirteen years.

But now it’s personal.

These children that died – that were murdered, whose families were destroyed by their destruction, whose potential was snuffed out so early – some were only a little older than my daughter. My sweet girl who has only just started chatting and babbling, who desperately wants to crawl and who I am desperate to see grow and develop – how lucky am I that I will have this with her? How horrible that Rwandan parents – those that survived their children – do not?  That they have to live now every day knowing their children are missing from this world?  That in some cases they need to continue to live, side by side, with their children’s murderers – possibly not forgiving, definitely not forgetting, but nonetheless coping, somehow, with the reality?

Tomorrow morning we leave for Goma – and from here on out nothing will be academic. It will be impossible. We will hear about brutality that is unparalleled the world over. And I will know the women and children who are telling me these stories. I will hold their hands and cry with them. It will be very, very personal, and very, very hard.

But I also know why we’re here. Because I know that behind every terrible story, there is a person with strength that is working to rebuild. And I know the incredible potential of Congo – in the character of its people, in the depth of its culture, in the richness of its resources.

After the Genocide Memorial today we visited the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, where now 350 of Rwanda’s most vulnerable orphaned children have the opportunity to study as a community and grow as adults. They learn to resolve conflicts and trust themselves. After only a year they have the confidence to confront Rwanda’s government ministers on the most difficult of national questions. Their potential is only just blooming – it’s a long road, but an important investment in a country still working to rebuild.

I know Congo can do it too. And I’m positive that we can help.

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November 5, 2009 | 9:58 am

Women Paid Far Less Than Men in Jewish Organizations

Posted by Susan Freudenheim

Anyone celebrating how far women have come since the heyday of the Women’s Movement of the 1960s and ‘70s should take a look at the survey just released by The Forward, which shows that among leading U.S. Jewish communal organizations “fewer than one in six are run by women, and those women are paid 61 cents to every dollar earned by male leaders.” This is despite the fact that women occupy approximately 75 percent of the workforce in those organizations, according to the report.

Indeed, when the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles recently named JTN chief Jay Sanderson as its new president, it was widely known that all four finalists for the job were men: Sanderson, former City Councilman Jack Weiss, former William Morris COO Irv Weintraub and Joshua Fogelson, executive director of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation. Were there no qualified women, many were asking? Or did all the great women decline to be considered?

Given the contribution women make to the Jewish community, on every level, there ought to be both more head scratching and consciousness raising on this issue. Among us all, male and female alike.

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November 4, 2009 | 10:48 pm

“Little Traitor” set in 1947 Palestine

Posted by Tom Tugend

“The Little Traitor,” opening Nov. 13 at Laemmle’s Music Hall in Beverly Hills and Town Center in Encino, harkens back to 1947, when “Palestinians” referred to the Jewish inhabitants and the hated enemies were British soldiers wearing red berets.
The film, based on the semi-biographical novel “Panther in the Basement” by Amos Oz, combines the coming of age story of a young patriot with historical insights on the struggle for a Jewish state.
Proffy (short for “professor”) is an 11-year Jerusalem boy, who hates the British soldiers who occupy his land, impose strict curfews, and conduct midnight house raids.
With two like-minded playmates, he forms the “underground cell” FOD (“Freedom or Death”), which sprays “British Go Home” graffiti on walls and tries to disable a British convey by scattering nails on the road.
On most evenings, Proffy sneaks up to the rooftop to scan the roads for the British enemy through binoculars. Not infrequently, his attention strays to a lovely young woman in a neighboring apartment in various stages of undress.
One evening, Proffy, played with remarkable authenticity by Ido Port, is caught after curfew hours by British Sgt. Dunlop, played by a sympathetic, if slightly corpulent, Alfred Molina.
An unlikely but warm friendship develops between Proffy and the bible-reading soldier during mutual language lessons, in which Dunlop explains the meaning of “snooker” and Proffy introduced his friend to the subtleties of “meshuggah.”
After a short time, Proffy’s fellow young freedom fighters discover the relationship and denounce him as a traitor. Proffy is hauled before a Jewish Agency “court” and sternly examined by Thodore Bikel as an interrogator.
In one of its most emotional scenes, the film recreates the almost unbearable tension of the November 1947 vote by the United Nations, which will determine the partition of Palestine between Arabs and Jews. Families huddle around the radio, keeping score of each country’s vote, and then burst into the street in wild jubilation after the final count.
Lynn Roth, who directed “Little Traitor” and wrote the screenplay, is a veteran Hollywood writer and producer, who has won numerous awards, especially as showrunner (executive producer) of the long-running 1980s television series “The Paper Chase.”
She has also been a longtime teacher in the master class for Israeli filmmakers in the Los Angeles/Tel Aviv Partnership Program and said that she had dreamt for decades about making a film in Israel.
After extensive preparations, she began filming “Little Traitor” in the old Musrara quarter of Jerusalem in the summer of 2006, and three days into the project the Lebanon War broke out.
“It struck me as ironic that I was making a film about fighting in Palestine in 1947, and now, almost 60 years later, the bullets were flying again,” she said.
Despite such distractions, including the army call-up of some of her crewmembers, Roth “miraculously” completed shooting the film in 28 days.
Roth, a New York native, said she is bound to Israel by many ties, not least the graves of all four grandparents in the Jewish state.

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November 3, 2009 | 11:26 pm

Claude Levi-Strauss,  Raw, Cooked, Kosher, Treyf

Posted by Rob Eshman

The Jewish biographical particulars of Claude Levy-Strauss, the French anthropologist who died Tuesday at the age of 100, are well-documented.  But the influence of his Jewish background on his thought and creativity leaves room for the knd of speculation he himself delighted in.

The man who gave the world the idea of deeply rooted logical structures that underpin human mythmaking, kinship, and other cultural manifestations—that is, structuralism—grew up in a religious tradition that venerates definition and boundaries, that translates the most elusive and ambiguous myths, stories, and legends, into rites and laws. 

Born in Brussels in 1908, Claude Lévi-Strauss was the son of Alsatian Jews.  As the New York Times reported:

Claude Lévi-Strauss was born on Nov. 28, 1908, in Belgium to Raymond Lévi-Strauss and the former Emma Levy. He grew up in France, near Versailles, where his grandfather was a rabbi and his father a portrait painter. His great-grandfather Isaac Strauss was a Strasbourg violinist mentioned by Berlioz in his memoirs. As a child, he loved to collect disparate objects and juxtapose them. “I had a passion for exotic curios,” he says in “Conversations.” “My small savings all went to the secondhand shops.” A large collection of Jewish antiquities from his family’s collection, he said, was displayed in the Musée de Cluny; others were looted after France fell to the Nazis in 1940.

The grandson of a rabbi set off to discover what lay behind the cultural differences of tribes in Brazil. What he determined was that binary structures of thought undergird human mythmaking. We are hardwired as humans to recognize and reconcile opposites: hot/cold up/down, raw/cooked. From this we create systems of kinship, culture, eating and social structures that help us make sense of world whose greatest opposite constantly haunts us: life and death.

How much of a stretch to understand how young Claude first exposure to these ideas in a nascent, inchoate form as he was exposed to the laws of kashrut, the firm boundaries between kosher and treyf (non-kosher), between Jew and Gentile, between the sabbath day and the rest of the weeks? Judaism is structuralism’s neatest tool box—you have to wander far into the hazy Hasidic and kabbalistic mystery worlds of golems, dybbuks, spirits and magic before you can truly blur the myriad boundaries Jewish life and literature set before you.  Levi-Strauss had to have drunk it all in, and saw it come alive again in the jungles of Brazil.

But there’s more.

When Levi-Strauss fled Vichy France, determining he was “potential fodder for the concentration camp”, he ended up teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York.  He taught ethnology, and befriended the great American anthropologist Franz Boas. Boas was a German Jew whose own theories of anthropology broke from the linear idea of culture an a continuum, from primitive to civilized. He promoted the idea that it was important to actually experience and understand various tribes and cultures, to understand them on their own terms.  This cultural particularism evolved into relativism, a word which has been reduced to four letters among conservatives and talk radio hosts.  But Boas advanced his ideas in part to help broaden the idea of the human family, to strengthen democracy and reduce the kind of hatred that he, as a Jew, was exposed to.

It is easy to assume Levi-Strauss saw in his own work the power of his own theories to break down walls among humans by showing how our differences arose from our essential Oneness—our brains worked similarly, though their manifestations took on many different forms.  At a time when his fellow Jews were being treated as subhuman, creatures apart, this idea had to have more than just theoretical power for Levy-Strauss.

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November 3, 2009 | 4:20 pm

Half a World Away or: Reconciling the Rage and Learning to Live with the Pain

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Posted by Janice Kamenir-Reznik

It took us 30 hours from the time we departed from Los Angeles to when we arrived in Kigali, Rwanda. We spent the evening visiting with our new Rwandan friends who will be our guides and translators   While we have not yet seen Kigali in the daytime, from our conversations tonight and by the looks of our brand new hotel, (which has free wireless, a swimming pool befitting a Hawaiian resort, a workout room, and more), Rwanda is working diligently on its tourism, its urban development, and on its economy.  And, of course, wants desperately to create an all time record for post genocide reconciliation.  We will learn much more tomorrow as we visit the genocide memorial.

I have the question lingering in my mind about the small village “justice courts” by which genocide perpetrators are supposed to seek direct forgiveness from the mother whose baby he killed or from the husband whose entire family he destroyed.  When almost one million were slaughtered in 100 days, can an apology assuage the pain and reduce the rage?  I know that our day tomorrow will give me lots more to think of on this theme.

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