February 25, 2013 | 11:05 am

Involuntary Participant Observation in the ultra-Orthodox World

Posted by Pini Herman

There's Comfort In Being Chained Together

The recently published The Rebel and the Rabbi’s Son is a fascinating read, even for someone such as this reader who grew up among the ultra-Orthodox without the heavy burdens of a dynastic lineage on his shoulders as did the author, Izzy Eichenstein. The situation is rare and the readable recounting is even rarer, but exceptionally instructive.

The story recounted has a very small element of open rebellion, but rather it’s a description of some choices that were made generations back, first by Izzy’s grandfather to leave the chassidic home kingdom where his future place in the Ultra-Orthodox world may have been prescriptively assured but ultimately, as seen in retrospect, swept away by the tides of World War II.  Later Izzy’s father’s decision to answer the call of a large congregation of Jews who were experimenting with bonafide emancipation, freedom and the experiment that is the retention of Judaism in America.  For Izzy this has consequences that place him into the rebel’s role that was not his choice.

The well-intentioned father/rabbi inadvertently let his young Ultra-orthodox princeling glance through the cracks in the the walls of the fortress of ultra-Orthodoxy.  The tragedy is that this is something that neither Izzy’s older brother and sister as well as their extended families had ever done at such a young age, and try as he might, Izzy cannot bond and cleave to a pre-emancipated Jewish life that everyone else in his immediate and extended family seems to like and is happy to live in from cradle to grave.

Fortunately, Rita, the classically modern-Orthodox Jewishly-raised woman and eventually Izzy’s wife,  is willing to accompany Izzy on his journey of exile.  Izzy and Rita slowly and painfully go from a “narrow” but status-rich ultra-Orthodox life to a new life where they can embrace their Judaism which they claim as their birthright rather than being driven out to a desert of historical discontinuity. Izzy ultimately has to ignore his Rabbi-father’s devastating opposition to name his son after Izzy’s grandfather. That was Izzy's first open act of rebellion, the open claim of the family heritage on his own terms.

Izzy and Rita continue to struggle with the recurrent experiences of discontinuity and their children struggle with the effects of the the discontinuity. The well-intentioned roads are a paved at great cost until a place of congruence is found and traveled to.  It's a lonely journey often travelled to other narrow places with peril and potentially disastrous outcomes. Just a couple of real-life situations I personally have had the opportunity to witness:  A 12 year-old girl yanked out of a co-ed modern Orthodox school by her ultra-Orthodox dynastic court family for having a crush on a boy and married off by 16 to a ultra-Orthodox European banker and mother of two children by age 18.  The tragic death of a lively-minded gay descendent of a venerated rabbinical line. Only two stories of dynastic children, such as Izzy, in the name of preserving the admittedly rich tradition and life of ultra-Orthodoxy lived and loved by many Jews.

The exercise of spiritual life-choice is not undertaken without hazard. The autobiographical author describes his ultra-Orthodox milieu, at one point, as a cult. He describes being slapped across the face for reciting a prayer for the State of Israel and being torn away from an idyllic religious-Zionist camp after two weeks, but the author neglects to elaborate on the schism between the ultra-Orthodox non-Zionism or anti-Zionism and the Zionism of the other streams of Judaism such as modern-Orthodox, Conservative and Reform that he explores and ultimately thrives in.

This book puts sorely needed flesh on a representative ultra-Orthodox dynasty, a group I often research and is the fastest growing demographic segment of the Jewish world,  but is often only poorly understood and described in caricature.  It is not a group that is going to fade in time, but rather ultra-Orthodox are emerging more and more in the crucial issues of the day within the life of the Jewish community of America and Israel because of their sheer demographic success.  It’s a well-written contemporary personal journey with great Jewish descriptive and demographic relevance.

Pini Herman, PhD. has served as Asst. Research Professor at the University of Southern California Dept. of Geography,  Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work,  Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles following Bruce Phillips, PhD. in that position and is a past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-lead independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently he is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. To email Pini: pini00003@gmail.com To follow Pini on Twitter: Follow @pinih

February 21, 2013 | 10:39 am

Sherman Responds on Visa Waiver for Israel Act

Posted Brad Sherman

Mr. Herman’s article, “Sherman’s U.S. Visa Waiver for Israel Endangered by High Rejection Rate of Israeli Non-Immigrants” on February 14, 2013, missed an important point: some countries have been admitted to the U.S. Visa Waiver Program with higher visa rejection rates than Israel.

My bill, H.R. 300, the Visa Waiver for Israel Act, would exempt the nonimmigrant refusal rate requirement for Israel to join the Visa Waiver Program.  The Visa Waiver Program allows nationals from 37 countries to enter the U.S. as temporary visitors for 90 days without first obtaining a visa from a U.S. consulate abroad.   The bill has now been introduced in the Senate by Senator Ron Wyden and Senator Orrin Hatch as US Senate Bill S.266.

The refusal rate requirement basically states that if more than 3% of the nation’s visitor visa applications are rejected by the U.S., the country cannot join the program.  Israel’s current refusal rate is 5.4%, down from 6.9% the year before.

However, there are countries in the Visa Waiver Program that also did not meet the 3% nonimmigrant refusal rate requirement when they joined and in fact some had higher rates than Israel – so the exemption the Visa Waiver for Israel Act provides for Israel is justifiable and fair.

In particular, Hungary, Latvia, and Lithuania had even higher nonimmigrant refusal rates than Israel when they joined the Visa Waiver Program.

The 110th Congress passed the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act (P.L. 110-53), which was signed into law in August 2007.  Section 711 created a temporary waiver authority for the nonimmigrant refusal rate (for countries under 10%).

Israel could have been one of the countries admitted with a waiver of the refusal rate, but this never happened.  Instead, several other countries – the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and South Korea – entered the program through the 2008 waiver of the nonimmigrant refusal rate.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report in September 2008, critical of the selection process, said State Department “officials told [GAO officials] that they lacked a clear rationale to explain” the selection process, which also involved the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and that it was “difficult to explain to countries with fiscal year 2007 refusal rates below 10 percent that have signaled interest in joining the program (such as Croatia, Israel, and Taiwan) why DHS is not negotiating with them.”  Thus, Israel could have been added to the Visa Waiver Program already, but an opportunity was missed in 2008.

The Visa Waiver for Israel Act provides the same treatment for Israel as several other countries that entered the program in 2008 and I’m encouraged that so many of my colleagues in the House, and now the Senate, have joined me in cosponsoring the bill.

Brad Sherman
Member of Congress

February 20, 2013

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February 19, 2013 | 10:32 am

Los Angeles had its own Israeli Ex-“Prisoner X”

Posted by Pini Herman

Not All Are Court-Charged, Tried or Sentenced Prisoners in Israel's Ayalon (Ramla) Prison

Ben Zygier, the Australian immigrant to Israel and purported Mossad agent who committed suicide in Ayalon Prison two years ago, is now known in the public furor in Israel about his secret imprisonment, as Prisoner X. Until another natural death in 1993, Los Angeles also had its own Israeli ex-Prisoner X who was also imprisoned in the same facility.

In 1982 when I was researching the Israeli community in Los Angeles, I went to a get-together at a private house of an Israeli who lived in Beverly Hills and the host sat me down next to a person who he introduced as Avri Elad, the “Third Person.” I had only the vaguest memory of an Israeli political scandal that was described as the "Lavon Affair" or the “The Third Person Affair.” Avri Elad first related to me that he had recently spent 12 years in Ramla prison in Israel, now called Ayalon prison and where Adolf Eichman was kept and hanged.  Ayalon (Ramla) Prison is also currently in the news because of what is now a two-hundred day hunger strike of an Arab administrative detainee and others also refusing to eat and  languishing without charges being brought against them which threaten to spark a Third Intifada according to Palestinian spokespeople.

Avri Elad reported that he was kept in Ramla prison an extra two years more than his ten year sentence because the government didn’t want to release him for reasons that he surmised were embarassment and fear of the Israeli security establishment. I thought that very curious. He related to me that he had been an Israeli spy in Egypt and that he had come to Israel in 1940 as a 13 year-old child Holocaust refugee from Vienna. Later, because of his fluency in German, he was tasked by IDF Intelligence to oversee sleeper cells in Egypt. In preparation for his cover as Paul Frank, a former SS officer with Nazi underground connections. Elad related to me that he underwent an operation to reverse his circumcision. I asked him if this hurt and he just grimaced and nodded.

When I asked Elad how he could be held two years past his court sentence, he said he was held under the Administrative Detention Law which Israel inherited from the British Mandate which allows the Israeli authorities to arrest and detain in prison people without charging them or setting a provisional date for trial. Currently is is alleged that over one hundred Palestinians are administratively detained, but it has been used to detain some Jewish Israeli citizens over the years, especially after Yitzchak Rabin's assasination and purported Jewish Underground members and Jewish settlers.  It is likely that as charges were never brought against him, Ben Zygier was administratively detained at the maximum security prison in the cell that was built for Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, and that Zygier was, as Avri Elad was in his time, being held in such secrecy that even his guards did not know his identity.

Avri Elad related to me some of his experiences in Ramla (Ayalon) prison where during the 1967 Six Day War. Elad said he was actually given weapons for protection against an Arab prison insurrection because the prison officials were afraid of a rebellion from the Arab prisoner population which was outnumbered the Jewish prisoners and jailers. In the weeks leading up to the Six Day War, the very existence of Israel was feared to be in jeopardy and the Prison Service gave weapons to some Jewish inmates in Ramla Prison, which were quickly retrieved after Israel's stunning victory. Elad had to wait an additional two years after his ten year prison sentence, and seemed bitter about it, saying something to the effect of "They just kept me in there because they were afraid of me." It was within the authority of the Ministry of Defence to administratively detain Avri Elad after his sentence ran out.  This may have been a factor in Avri Elad's emigration from Israel.

Elad died in July, 1993 in agreed to or self-imposed exile in Los Angeles, Elad publicly revealed himself from Los Angeles to be the ''Third Man'' of Israel's Lavon Affair in 1976, six years before I chanced to meet him.

The facts as they are known of the case are:

The spy ring was not run by the Israeli Mossad intelligence service, but rather by unit of AMAN (IDF intelligence). The rationale behind creation of this group was that they would be local sleeper agents, trained in various techniques, who would remain in place and be activated only in case of war. At some point, someone decided, for unknown reasons, to activate the ring without waiting for war. In 1954, Egyptian authorities arrested 11 Egyptian Jews who had been involved in, what was believed to be a plot to bomb American and British diplomatic targets in order to subvert any developing alliance between Egypt and the western powers. But their operator - an Israeli the censor would only permit the press to describe as the ''Third Man'' or "X" - managed to escape and return to Israel. Two of the accused Egyptian Jews were hung and six others were sentenced to prison. The remaining three were released.

The Third Man - so called because he was third in command in the operation, after the chief of military intelligence and his deputy - was arrested on charges of espionage on his return. Prosecutors said Avri was seduced by Egyptian money and promises of freedom. Much of Avri's defense centered around the claim he was framed by his superiors because they wanted a scapegoat to blame for the fiasco. Despite his conviction, the claim had repercussions: the defense minister at the time, Pinhas Lavon, was forced to resign because of the scandal.

Lavon's resignation set the stage for the comeback from retirement of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, who took Lavon's place. The subsequent rift between Ben-Gurion and Lavon haunted Israeli politics well into the 1960s and led to a temporary split in the founding Labor Party.

Elad, who was born Adolf Seindenwerg in Vienna, arrived in British mandate Palestine when he was 13. He served with the British army in World War II and fought in Israel's Independence War as an intelligence officer. He maintained his innocence until his death, although, according to the AP in 1988, ''October,'' an Egyptian magazine, cited Egyptian sources saying Elad was a double agent for both Egypt and Israel.

Like many other immigrants to Israel Elad hebraicized his name - but only after his imprisonment,H as Elad related to me, to hide his identity from other Ramla prison inmates. Avri Elad was a defiant choice: in Hebrew, it means Robust Forever.

Pini Herman, PhD. has served as Asst. Research Professor at the University of Southern California Dept. of Geography,  Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work,  Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles following Bruce Phillips, PhD. in that position and is a past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-lead independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently he is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. To email Pini: pini00003@gmail.com To follow Pini on Twitter: Follow @pinih

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February 14, 2013 | 3:10 pm

Sherman’s US Visa Waiver for Israel Endangered by High Rejection Rate of Israeli Non-Immigrants

Posted by Pini Herman

Many Israelis experience rejection by U.S. consular officers in Tel Aviv when applying for non-immigrant visas to the U.S. In 2010, 6.4 percent of the over 140 thousand Israeli U.S. non-immigrant visa applicants, approximately 8,000 Israelis were refused a visitors visa in 2010 .

This high rejection rate of Israelis wanting to visit the U.S. is preventing the passage of the newly re-elected Brad Sherman's first bill introduced, House Resolution 300 or the Visa Waiver for Israel Act of 2013. The House of Representatives has previously passed a bill accepting Israel into the program but it was struck down quickly in the Senate because it did meet the criteria for designation as program countries are specified in the Immigration and Nationality Act whose criteria stress passport security and a very low nonimmigrant visa refusal rate: not more than 3%.  (Brad Sherman's reply to this blog).

One may think that the high visa refusal rate to Israelis is an outcome of the rejection of Arab or Muslim applicants and likely that is not the case as the U.S. is likely not a major destination for these tourist and business travelers. A likely cause of the high refusal rate may stem from an unwritten policy of rejecting ultra-Orthodox who may apply in large family groups where the male is engaged in full-time Torah study and the breadwinner may be the wife.

This scenario was described on a Jewish Journal blog, since removed, by a former U.S. diplomatic consular officer in a recent Jewish Journal blog where he bragged about the development and enforcement of this policy at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv. The former diplomat wrote:

“During my diplomatic tour in Tel Aviv, I denied a tourist visa to every single able-bodied Haredi man whose “job” was studying Torah and Talmud. “

Secular Israelis also face the trauma of what may seem like arbitrary rejection.  I witnessed the tear-filled scene at a relative’s house in Jerusalem when their 20 year-old daughter, who had just completed her service in the Israeli army, happened to return home from a long day waiting at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv where she was refused a tourist visa by a consular officer who was convinced that she really wanted to emigrate to the U.S. rather than that she wanted to take a trip she'd been looking forward to and saving up for before she started work and higher education.

As I’ve written elsewhere, Israel actually has half the out-migration rate of native-borns than the average rate of other comparable countries. It could be that the outrageous behavior by the US Consular diplomatic officer described above and other like-minded diplomats could be describing an aspect of the culture of the visa granting operation in the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, may be why the Israeli native out-migration rate is so low.  What is clear, the Visa Waiver Program for Israel is in danger from this pattern of behavior by U.S. State Department Employees.

My opinion is that Israelis have a low out-migration rate because they choose to remain in Israel. Many Israelis have passports other than their Israeli passports, but do not utilize them.  Israelis seem to just collect them, in case.  Perhaps, they perceive, just a bit more discrimination at the US Embassy in Israel than do the applicants in 37 other countries of the world.  

Read Brad Sherman's reply to this blog.

Pini Herman, PhD. has served as Asst. Research Professor at the University of Southern California Dept. of Geography,  Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work,  Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles following Bruce Phillips, PhD. in that position and is a past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-lead independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently he is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. To email Pini: pini00003@gmail.com To follow Pini on Twitter: Follow @pinih

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February 7, 2013 | 1:12 pm

Israel is Waiting For Its Holocaust Survivors to Die

Posted by Pini Herman

"Israel is Waiting For Its Holocaust Survivors to Die" is the title of an opinion piece by Amos Rubin in Haaretz arguing that the Israeli government only thinks of Holocaust survivors as a financial burden.

The 1997 Los Angeles Jewish Population Survey also found disproportionate poverty among Holocaust survivors.

As a demographer who has researched the Holocaust survivor population I have been asked about the size of this dwindling vulnerable communtiy.  In 1997 I found an estimated 13,975 Holocaust survivors through the Holocaust question to household respondents on the LA Jewish Population Survey. Their Second Generation children,  numbered an estimated 37,010 persons.  

The US life expectancy in 2000 of 70 year-olds was about 18 years.  Being a little more conservative, lets make that life expectancy 20 years, or that by 2020 most Holocaust survivors in LA will have passed. 

Assuming that there hasn't been migration in or out of LA of Holocaust survivors, I estimate that there are about 4,200 Holocaust survivors living in Los Angeles currently.

Pini Herman, PhD. has served as Asst. Research Professor at the University of Southern California Dept. of Geography,  Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work,  Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles following Bruce Phillips, PhD. in that position and is a past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-lead independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently he is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. To email Pini: pini00003@gmail.com To follow Pini on Twitter: Follow @pinih

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February 4, 2013 | 4:52 pm

Israel US Embassy Diplomat Discriminated Against Jewish Ultra-Orthodox

Posted by Pini Herman

Full-time Torah Scholars Need Not Line Up and Apply

Mark Paredes a Mormon journalist who boasted in his Jewish Journal blog of refusing tourist visas to the U.S. to Haredim, Jewish Ultra-Orthodox, as a matter of his personal policy.  Parades recounts when as a U.S. State Department Consular diplomat in Tel Aviv he encountered any Haredi households where the man studied and only the Haredi wife was employed, he would always deny visas.  These actions and like actions by other US diplomats may have the effect of blocking the Brad Sherman introduced  pro-Israel House Bill 300 or the Visa Waiver for Israel Act of 2013, a similar 2003 Visa Waiver Program for Israel was rejected by the Senate on the basis of Israel's high rate (6%) of visa application rejection which needed to be no greater than 3%.

Parades portrays Haredi males as deadbeats in spite of the fact that the Haredi wife was gainfully employed, in a culturally accepted division of labor within the Haredi community.

As past careful demographic and economic analysis about “migratory undesirables” such as Eastern European Jews, undocumented Mexican immigrants has repeatedly proven, the U.S. has gained much materially through their migration.  I would argue that granting US tourism or immigrant visas to Haredim would prove to be a net gain for the U.S. Unfortunately, Parades used his Mormon theology to tip the US Consulate’s scales and cost many Israeli Haredi time and money lost in useless visa applications which can come under the Talmudic description of thievery.

Parades’ narrative is reminiscent of the "binders of women" cultural blindness displayed by a prominent Mormon in the last US presidential election.  A family unit where the "wrong" gender is the breadwinner gets filed in the "unacceptable binder" in Parades’ mind, and unfortunately our US taxpayer money was funding, Parades, a dysfunctional U.S. consular clerk in Tel Aviv who seemed to be practicing a Mormon worldview.  It is useful to remember that the bees on beehives symbolizing industry in Mormonism are females.

Fortunately Congress is now considering taking away such discretion from clerks like Parades by enabling Israelis to travel to the US without a visa.

Mormonism and gender inequality are synonymous, but they are not comparable or identical to the gender inequality Parades witnessed in the Haredi community. I would even suspect that Parades cultural and religious blindness were not benign as evidence by his actions as a State Department employee.

While Parades may display his bona-fides as a philo-Semite, as evidenced by his employ by an Israeli Consulate, where hopefully he was not tasked with visa granting duties.  Parades by hitching a Mormon worldview to Yair Lapid’s demand of parity of compulsory military service for Israel’s Haredim rushed in with a too familiar stereotype and tale which speaks which makes me very uncomfortable.

An interchage with Parades:

Pini - as I indicated above, I was willing to give visas to Haredi women who worked, and almost always did so. You can rant against Mormons all you want, but at least we don’t expect the rest of society to subsidize our religious practices. Please don’t try to distort what I have written. Once again = working Haredi women got visas, unemployed Haredi men didn’t.

Comment by myself:

But Mark, you do expect society to subsidize your religious practice.  The LDS church enjoys tax exempt and deductible status, which means that all the streets, sewers and other infrastructure around impressive LDS Temples are paid for or foregone by all tax payers. You use an LDS chaplain in the military, prison, publicly funded hospital, etc., your religious practice has been publicly subsidized.

How in the world would a Haredi Torah-studying man enjoy greater subsidies in the U.S. than you enjoy as a Mormon?  Lack of Haredi Israeli military service raised by Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid is no excuse for you to engage in a rant about a distinctly Jewish group.

This was the post that I was responding to and has been removed by the author without any apology or acknowlegement on his part.  I feel think what Mark Paredes described was outrageous and merits a public apology from him, if not an attempt at restitution to all the people his US Consular discretion unfairly targeted.  Mark doesn't seem to feel anything is wrong.  To me, his actions seem faith-based with real consequences for real people. While I'm sure Mark was not ill-intentioned, what he wrote was not benign and deserves attention and reaction.

Lapid, Lazy Haredim, and American Visas

Posted by Mark Paredes
February 4, 2013 | 12:57 am

I have never commented publicly on the results of an Israeli election, even while speaking on behalf of the local Israeli Consulate General, but it’s hard to hide my glee at the success of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party. In particular, I salute his determination to follow his father’s example by attempting to take on the corrupt political party Shas and the 45,000 deadbeats in the Haredi community who believe in studying Torah on the public dole.

I’ll never forget my first experience with a shiftless Haredi rabbi. I was conducting visa interviews at the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, and had only been in Israel for a few weeks. After inquiring about his studies and family, including eight children, I noticed that he had left the “present occupation” space blank. When I asked him what he did for a living, he replied “I study Torah.” Incredulous, I asked who in his family was providing the money to raise the children. Without a hint of shame or embarrassment, he informed me that his wife worked while he studied all day. I denied him a visa, then told him that his wife was welcome to apply for a visa because she was working. His response? “I hope you join Jesus in hell.” This experience, combined with my witnessing Haredi students strewing broken glass on the streets of Jerusalem on the eve of Yom Kippur, didn’t exactly endear the ultra-Orthodox to me at first.

During my diplomatic tour in Tel Aviv, I denied a tourist visa to every single able-bodied Haredi man whose “job” was studying Torah and Talmud. This was not an easy policy for me to establish. After all, I cherish people’s freedom to do just about whatever they want in terms of religious practice without needing others’ approval. In addition, it was (and still is) up to Israelis to decide whether their tax dollars should subsidize laziness and sloth. Finally, I am someone who has engaged in a serious study of the scriptures, including the Hebrew Bible, for many years, and have enormous respect for those who dedicate a significant portion of their time to religious studies. That said, I will always believe that God’s commandment in the Torah for man to work by the sweat of his brow is an eternal one, and that it is unnatural for an able-bodied man to want to shift the burden of providing for his family to his wife and the government.

In the end I decided that it wasn’t fair to adjudicate visa applications according to my personal religious philosophy. However, it was perfectly acceptable to conclude that the Haredi lifestyle did not meet the requirements of American immigration law.

When a visa applicant stood in front of me, the burden of proving his/her intentions didn’t fall upon me. Instead, the applicant had to show me that he had ties to Israel that he would not willingly abandon. For able-bodied men around the world, a stable job is pretty much indispensable in order to show that he is a responsible member of society. For me, denying unemployed adult yeshiva students visas was not discrimination against their religion, but a refusal to grant them special privileges based on their peculiar religious practices. Having served as a consular officer in Guadalajara, I knew that if a 30-year-old Catholic Mexican man with several children applied for a visa and stated that he was unemployed, he would be laughed out of the consulate. There was no reason for a diplomat in Tel Aviv to make a different visa decision because the applicant in question wore a black hat instead of a sombrero.

Thankfully, I did go on to have positive experiences with some Haredis in Israel, including a few who took me to a wedding celebration in Kfar Chabad. I learned that the Haredi educational system leaves its graduates woefully unable to compete in the modern world, so that even if some of the yeshiva students wanted to leave their studies and find a good job, they would have a very difficult time doing so. Former Israeli Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef told the Torah scholars that they would be better off leaving the country than submitting to a military draft like their secular counterparts. One only wishes that Rabbi Yosef would lead by example on this one.

I wish Mr. Lapid well in his upcoming battle with Rabbi Yosef and the deadbeat supporters of his corrupt political machine. The term “Haredi” means “those who tremble before God.” Assuming that God values hard work and honest politics, many Haredi men will have a lot to tremble about in a coming day.

Mark Paredes has worked in Los Angeles for the Consulate General of Israel, American Jewish Congress and ZOA. You can contact Mark at deverareligione@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @jewsandmormons.

Pini Herman, PhD. has served as Asst. Research Professor at the University of Southern California Dept. of Geography,  Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work,  Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles following Bruce Phillips, PhD. in that position and is a past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-lead independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently he is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. To email Pini: pini00003@gmail.com To follow Pini on Twitter: Follow @pinih

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January 31, 2013 | 12:57 pm

Israelis, Jews and the Bipartisan Immigration Plan

Posted by Pini Herman

We Were At The Gates Too

The proposed way of giving legal status to estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants by a bipartisan group of senators, led by Senators Charles Schumer and John McCain will have little direct effect on Jews but significant effect on people that Jews come into contact daily at home, business and the work setting.

The country with the greatest number of Jews in the world, Israel, historically has supplied very few long term undocumented immigrants to the U.S. as it’s native-born Jews tend to emigrate at half the rate of other comparable industrialized countries, four percent vs. eight percent.  When the 1988 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) legalized about three million undocumented immigrants almost no Jewish or non-Jewish Israelis or were among them. Jews from other countries, such as Iran and the Former Soviet Union, having undocumented status are also relatively rare.  

It brings to mind the last legislative effort of former U.S. Congressman Howard Berman was spearheading and sponsoring an E-2 Investor Visa bill for Israelis.  Berman highlighted in his May 25, press release his legislation introduced in February, 3 months before the June 5, primary election that he lost by a landslide. The press release reads: “Added Berman, ‘Israeli investors have a natural home in the San Fernando Valley and Southern California to expand their businesses, hire American workers, and strengthen the economy. Organizations like The Southern California Israel Chamber of Commerce, a non-profit, non-governmental organization encouraging trade and investment opportunities are well positioned to seize on this opportunity.’”  

Actually the passed E-2 Visa legislation won’t give Israelis any fast track for actual immigration. E-2 visas are temporary visas available to foreign nationals who must be a national of a country with which the United States has a treaty. To qualify for the visa, a foreign national must come to the U.S. in order to develop and direct the operations of a business in which the applicant has invested, or is in the process of investing a substantial amount of capital.  It seems, from migration data, that most Israelis prefer to remain and invest in Israel.

The most significant effect that the new immigration proposal will have will be for the young Israelis who are encountered at shopping malls selling goods from carts around the holidays. A proposed system of recording the visas of those leaving the U.S. for overstays of their allowed visa periods. The proposed consequence of visa overstays and violations might be not being granted future visas to the U.S.

The primary effect of the senate group’s immigration proposals will be felt by the Jewish community in the very domestic spheres of homes and commerce.  Many undocumented workers are currently employed as domestic workers, caretakers, gardeners, handypersons in Jewish homes. For example, Jewish population surveys indicate that often the non-Jewish members of a Jewish household are live-in caretakers.

Jewish-owned service and light industrial businesses employ undocumented skilled and unskilled workers in areas such as property management, food service, tourism, hospitality, warehousing and distribution. 

The legalization of thousands of undocumented employed by Jews will undoubtedly have the intended effects of normalizing what currently is a discomforting situation of engaging in illegality in otherwise usually law-abiding lives.  Certain costs of business and living will likely rise, such as what is paid for food and services. Legalization will enable the greater job mobility and labor protections and likely increase worker options and therefore normalize the labor market for everyone and likely to increase service and manufacturing quality.

Those members of the Jewish community on the margins in terms of income and business may be the most affected by the changing goods and labor markets available to them.  This may present some community dislocation that the organized Jewish community and service agencies will need to plan for.

I urge you also read a well-argued, fact-filled JJ blog entitled "Immigration Reform: A Jewish Imperative" by Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, the Founder & President of Uri L’Tzedek, makes a strong case why the Jewish community should get behind immigration reform.

Pini Herman, PhD. has served as Asst. Research Professor at the University of Southern California Dept. of Geography,  Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work,  Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles following Bruce Phillips, PhD. in that position and is a past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-lead independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently he is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. To email Pini: pini00003@gmail.com To follow Pini on Twitter: Follow @pinih

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January 25, 2013 | 5:04 pm

Israeli Game of Chicken with Gaza Bit Netanyahu Election Morning

Posted by Pini Herman

Who Flinched?

How could hundreds of pre-election polls in Israel be so wrong? Actual voting is different than opinions shared with pollsters.  Much of the bellicose verbiage of the right wing parties resonated with the “resiliency” that the average Israeli is supposed to display after weathering a harrowing war experience. Israelis weren't voting with their feet by emigrating, but they definitely voted with their ballots and displayed higher vother turnouts.

Essentially, moderating self-preservation impulses were what ultimately was expressed in the voting booths.  Even the fighting elite such as the Israeli Air Force, seemed to have let moderating impulses guide their votes.  As Aluf Benn of Haaretz writes: 

Most voters at air force-base polling stations preferred Lapid over Netanyahu. Is this because they are more moderate, or because of the implication of the premier's threats against the Islamic Republic?

Five of the past six elections have had an unilateral Israeli-initiated military actions, when there had not been or was no extraordinary impending threat on Israel’s civilians, such as the assassination of Hamas’  Ahmed Jabari as he was in the middle of maintaining and negotiating an expanded ceasefire with Israel.

In the nine weeks before the 2013 elections Israelis discovered that rockets locally made in a sieged Gaza had achieved longer ranges that included Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. That new fact may have have nagged many Israelis to take a step back and vote for a “moderate” new personality, Yair Lapid,  who laid down right after the election as his opening gambit in coalition talks were the predictable ending the yeshiva military exemption and—surprise (as J.J. Goldberg points out)—reopening peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. 

Lapid is listening to his electorate who woke up in the morning deciding to vote for him after telling pollsters something else for months.

Pini Herman, PhD. has served as Asst. Research Professor at the University of Southern California Dept. of Geography,  Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work,  Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles following Bruce Phillips, PhD. in that position and is a past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-lead independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently he is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. To email Pini: pini00003@gmail.com To follow Pini on Twitter: Follow @pinih

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