Give peace a chance

It’s a Jewish tradition to undertake an act you know to be right, even if, at first, you don’t feel it in your kishkes. Do the right thing, and maybe the feeling will come later. That’s the attitude American Jews should take toward the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, set to begin next week in Washington.

Whole volumes have been written on the meaning of the dual commandment to “seek peace and pursue it.” But surely it involves the leader of Israel making a sincere effort to achieve peace at a conference called by the Jewish state’s great protector and ally, the United States.

Of course, there are myriad reasons to be pessimistic. Every war and terror outbreak, every bit of blood-curdling hyperbole in long Israeli-Arab conflict works against conciliation. Cynicism is easy, especially on this subject. But nothing worth having is easy to achieve.

Still, we can recall the post-Oslo Accords glow of good feelings, when it seemed peace was busting out all over Israel and the disputed territories, bringing prosperity with it. Let’s allow ourselves to hope for its return.

Letter to the editor

Nice job

Kol HaKavod to Barbara Bayer, for her feature article in last week’s Jewish Chronicle, focusing on the 20th anniversary of Operation Exodus — when the Jewish community banded together to rescue and resettle more than 1 million Jewish émigrés from the former Soviet Union in the United States and Israel.

Bayer’s article reminds us once again, of the strength and power of community. This colossal effort surrounding the post-Soviet exodus in the early 1990s simply couldn’t have happened without the collective participation of individuals, families and communal institutions in Kansas City, throughout the U.S. and Israel.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City will celebrate this milestone anniversary of Operation Exodus at our annual meeting on Sept. 1. Our goal for the evening is to honor every community member and organization that played a role in welcoming nearly 1000 former Soviet émigrés to Kansas City. We will also honor the émigrés themselves, who have given so much to our community over the past two decades. We welcome you to this special event and encourage you to RSVP at (913) 327-8103.

Todd Stettner
Executive Vice President/CEO,
Jewish Federation

Exodus plus 20

From the perspective of two decades on, it’s clear that the post-Iron Curtain exodus of Jews from the former Soviet Union was an epochal event in modern Jewish history.  (See front page story)

What seems like the last great Diaspora Jewish community that was in danger of liquidation has been freed — either to start new lives in Israel or America, vitalizing those communities, or by the crumbling of Soviet-era anti-religious restrictions.

Congratulations are due to the American and Israeli Jews who opened their hearts to the newcomers, but moreover to the brave émigrés themselves. We hope, in retrospect, that they are glad about the decision they made to emigrate. We certainly are.

Letter to the editor

Questions from Iowa

The Chronicle’s Aug. 6 article carried the headline “Is anti-Semitism involved in Iowa prosecution?”

As a Kansas City native and Jewish Iowan for the past 30 years, I think that the answer is no — certainly no more so than having  prosecuted a Catholic would make it anti-Catholic.
From my perspective as an Iowa taxpayer funding the motion-picture incentives, I cannot help but wonder how Ms. Weiner Runge, a person seemingly familiar with the Omaha, Neb., and Council Bluffs, Iowa, area through her visits to her parents’ home, could get the project cost  estimates so grossly incorrect. By her own admission in the article, making a film in Council Bluffs was like “going camping in the middle of nowhere — you have to take everything with you.” Given that knowledge, is it not legitimate to ask how these overruns happened, what her role was as executive producer of the enterprise, and what, if any, laws were broken?

Let there be no doubt that anti-Semitism is an unacceptable basis for a prosecution, and, if proven, would constitute the basis for me to vote against the Iowa Attorney General for re-election. But the corollary to that is that being Jewish and being prosecuted is not, in and of itself, evidence of anti-Semitism.

I have no clue as to Ms. Weiner Runge’s guilt or innocence. That will and should be settled  in the courts.

Jay Jacobowitz
Davenport, Iowa