Obama Faith-based Office Has Specific Goals

The Obama administration’s Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships wants to work with religious and community groups to achieve goals in four specific areas.

Joshua DuBois, executive director of the office, said the goal of the Bush administration’s faith-based office to “level the playing field” for faith-based organizations when bidding for government grants was important, but that the new president’s goal was to utilize the knowledge and expertise of religious and community organizations to achieve particular policy goals. Those priorities include addressing domestic poverty and contributing to the economic recovery, promoting responsible fatherhood, reducing unintended pregnancies and the need for abortion, and enhancing interreligious dialogue and cooperation. He also emphasized that the administration wanted a “policy-based partnership,” and that the office does not have a political or advocacy-based agenda.

DuBois spoke at a Monday afternoon briefing for about 50 leaders of religious and community-based organizations, including most of the 25 members of the new Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The briefing was scheduled to continue all day Tuesday and included sessions with a variety of administration officials working on issues such as education, urban affairs and the budget.

DuBois noted that despite the beliefs of many to the contrary, the faith-based office does not distribute grant money, although it could provide “technical assistance” to groups who were interested in applying for such grants from government agencies.

The most contentious legal issue is whether faith-based groups receiving federal funds should be able to take religion into account when hiring, which groups were allowed to do during the Bush administration. When Obama established the faith-based office in February, a legal review was in put in place but no decision was made on the employment issue.

Schindler’s List Unearthed at Australian Library
Sydney’s Jewish Museum and descendants of survivors saved by Oskar Schindler are angry that a carbon copy of his famous list was sold to the State Library of New South Wales.

The German industrialist’s list of more than 800 Jews — described by the library as “one of the most powerful documents of the 20th century” — was given to Australian author Thomas Keneally in 1980 by Leopold Pfefferberg, a Schindler survivor living in Los Angeles. It prompted Keneally to write his Booker Prize-winning work, “Schindler’s Ark,” which spawned Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film, “Schindler’s List.”

The library said this week it paid an undisclosed sum to a dealer for Keneally’s manuscript material in 1996. But the document had been languishing in the bowels of the library for 13 years until it was recently discovered by a researcher.

The Sydney Jewish Museum and others related to the Schindler story were disappointed the list was sold to the library. Museum president John Landerer told J-Wire, a local Jewish Web site, “I can only express disappointment that he [Keneally] chose to dispose of such a precious document this way.”

The 13 pages of yellowed paper listing the names of Jews saved from the Nazis was scheduled to go display at the library on Tuesday.

Pentagon Studying 2006 Lebanon War
The U.S. Defense Department is studying the 2006 Lebanon War to prepare itself for future conflicts.

The month-long war is garnering attention because it bears on a debate between military leaders in the United States, some of whom want to change the military so it is better prepared for unconventional conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan, and others who believe that kind of preparation would be at the expense of more conventional warfare, the Washington Post reported Monday.

Hezbollah fought a reasonably conventional war against Israel, destroying many Israeli armor columns using sophisticated anti-tank guided missiles, and fought ground battles with Israeli troops lasting up to 12 hours. Hezbollah also eavesdropped on Israeli communications and used a cruise missile to strike an Israeli ship.

The Defense Department has sent about a dozen teams to interview Israeli officers who fought against Hezbollah, according to the Post. In addition, the Army and Marine Corps have run several multimillion-dollar war games to test how U.S. forces would perform in a similar situation.

Brooklyn DA to Combat Orthodox Sex Abuse
The Brooklyn district attorney launched a project to combat sex abuse in the Orthodox community.

Dubbed Project Kol Tzedek, Hebrew for Voice of Justice, the effort was announced at an April 1 news conference by Charles Hynes.

The effort, in partnership with a number of local Jewish organizations, will include a confidential hotline and outreach to yeshivas and synagogues.

Hynes has come under fire in the past for not responding adequately to allegations of sexual abuse in the Orthodox communities of Brooklyn. Though some, including former critics of the district attorney, welcomed the new effort, some rabbis remained dubious.

“I don’t trust the DA to do the right thing,” Rabbi Meir Fund of Flatbush, one of the target neighborhoods set to receive heightened attention from the district attorney’s office, told the New York Daily News. “These people are corrupt. If he was sincere he would have done something 20 years ago.”

Mubarak Invites Netanyahu to Meet
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak invited Israel’s new prime minister to a meeting at Sharm el-Sheikh.

Mubarak and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone Monday evening. Mubarak congratulated Netanyahu on forming a government, according to the Prime Minister’s Office. The leaders reportedly also discussed the countries’ good bilateral relations, and promised to continue and strengthen them. 

Netanyahu called the peace between Israel and Egypt “of supreme importance.”

No date was set for the proposed meeting.

Egypt has said it will boycott Netanyahu’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, unless he apologizes for past statements, including that Mubarak “can go to hell” if he does not visit the Jewish State.

Briefs courtesy Jewish Telegraphic Agency