by justin sulsky
jta
A highlight-chronology of the top Jewish-world news items of the past year:
OCTOBER
berlin | The remains of more than 50 people, many of them children, were discovered in a mass grave in Menden, Germany. Experts suspected the dead were victims of the Nazis’ so-called euthanasia program, in which disabled people were murdered.
jerusalem | Israel said it would continue Air Force flights over Lebanon. Defense Minister Amir Peretz said the surveillance flights were needed to track arms shipments to Hezbollah combatants from neighboring Syria, two months after a cease-fire ended what would be later designated as Israel’s Second Lebanon War.
NOVEMBER
washington | The Democratic Party won back the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1994 and also gained control of the Senate. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the Orthodox Jew who was the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2000, kept his seat even though he lost in the Democratic primary to liberal Ned Lamont. Six new Jewish members of Congress and two new Jewish senators were elected. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who has close ties to many Jewish groups, was chosen as Speaker of the House.
los angeles | The United Jewish Communities refocused its annual General Assembly on fundraising to rebuild Israel’s north after the country’s war with Hezbollah. By the time of the G.A., the UJC had raised $320 million for its Israel Emergency Campaign. By now it has raised some $360 million.
jerusalem | Talks on forming a unity government in the Palestinian Authority were suspended. Palestinians had hoped that by bringing the more moderate Fatah into the government, a Western aid embargo imposed when Hamas came to power in March could be removed. But the Islamist terrorist group rejected donor nations’ conditions that it recognize Israel and renounce terrorism.
DECEMBER
new york | The Conservative movement’s legal authorities approved a rabbinic opinion allowing ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis and sanctioning same-sex unions. The move followed years of internal debate over whether to reverse the traditional ban on gay clergy. The Jewish Theological Seminary’s new chancellor, Arnie Eisen, who had been instrumental in building Stanford’s Jewish studies program, later announced that JTS would accept gay and lesbian students to its rabbinical and cantorial schools.
jerusalem | Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted a conference in Tehran that brought together Holocaust revisionists including David Duke and members of Neturei Karta, a fervently Orthodox anti-Zionist group. The two-day conference, titled “The International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust,” sparked international outrage.
JANUARY
jerusalem | Longtime Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek died.
waltham, mass. | Former President Jimmy Carter discussed his controversial book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” at Brandeis University. The book, published in November, blamed Israel for the failure of Middle East peace. It sparked widespread debate and prompted 14 Jewish members of the Carter Center board to resign in protest. Democratic leaders had distanced themselves from Carter’s views.
FEBRUARY
jerusalem | Masorti Jews reached a compromise with the government over the freedom of men and women to daven together at an area of the Western Wall. Israel’s Conservative movement dropped its Supreme Court appeal after the government agreed to enforce mixed groups’ ability to worship for free at a site at the southern end of the Wall.
jerusalem | U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met in Jerusalem. Olmert and Rice reiterated the international preconditions for the resumption of aid to the Palestinian Authority — renouncing violence, recognizing Israel and adhering to past peace accords.
san francisco | A Holocaust denier was arrested in connection with an attack on Elie Wiesel while the Nobel Prize winner was attending an interfaith forum. Eric Hunt apparently wanted to force Wiesel to recant his wartime memoir “Night.” He was extradited to California, where he later pled insanity and apologized to Wiesel in court.
MARCH
berlin | A German court sentenced Germar Rudolf to two and a half years in jail for anti-Jewish incitement and Holocaust denial. He claimed in a 1991 article that the Nazis did not gas Jews at Auschwitz. Rudolf was sentenced to 14 months by a German court in 1995, but fled the country, eventually settling in the U.S. He was deported back to Germany in November 2005.
APRIL
blacksburg, va. | Liviu Librescu was one of 32 victims killed by a student gunman at Virginia Tech. The engineering professor, a Holocaust survivor who had moved to Israel, was shot while blocking the doorway to his classroom. He prevented the gunman from entering and enabled all but one of his students to escape through the window.
washington | U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, delivered a message to Syrian leader Bashar Assad, saying Israel is ready to talk peace. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert immediately issued a “clarification” saying Syria must first end its backing for terrorism.
washington | Federal Judge T.S. Ellis III rejected a government proposal to close the trial of two former AIPAC staffers. Ellis ruled the request unconstitutional. Former senior staffers Steve Rosen and Weissman were indicted in August 2005 and now face a trial date of Jan. 14, 2008.
moscow | Russian Jews memorialized President Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first democratically elected president, as the one who ended decades of state-sanctioned anti-Semitism.
jerusalem | An Israeli governmental report sharply criticized Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s management of the 2006 war in Lebanon. The Winograd Commission’s report said there was a “serious failure in exercising judgment, responsibility and prudence” in the government’s handling of the war. Despite a 100,000-person rally against Olmert in Tel Aviv and a call from Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to resign, Olmert stood firm in his decision to stay in office.
san francisco | The Jim Joseph Foundation announced the first of its long-awaited grants, designating four gifts, the largest, $2.5 million, to B’nai B’rith Youth Organization’s Youth Professional Initiative. It is estimated that the foundation will give away up to $25 million a year.
MAY
new york | Edgar Bronfman, who served as president of the World Jewish Congress for nearly 30 years, resigned. The move came two months after he fired his close associate and a top WJC official, Rabbi Israel Singer. Bronfman claimed Singer stole money from the WJC, an allegation Singer denied.
jerusalem | The Labor Party ousted Amir Peretz as its leader in an internal vote, which followed a government-appointed commission that cited his mishandling of the Second Lebanon War. In the June runoff, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak beat Ayalon, whom Peretz ultimately backed, by a narrow margin.
JUNE
jerusalem | Shimon Peres, 83, was elected Israel’s ninth president, a largely ceremonial role, for a seven-year term. The Nobel Prize winner has held virtually every top civilian post in Israel during his 60-year career, including that of prime minister.
jerusalem | Hamas gunmen took over the Gaza Strip after routing the rival Fatah at a key Palestinian Authority security compound. Hamas declared victory after seizing the Preventive Security Service compound in Gaza City, a last stronghold of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah in the coastal territory.
jerusalem | Israeli President Moshe Katsav confessed to sexual misconduct under a plea bargain that spared him more serious rape charges and possible prison time. He resigned his presidency early as part of the plea.
JULY
new york | The Catholic Church’s decision to allow the use of the Latin Mass sparked a to-do between Jews and Catholics. Pope Benedict XVI issued a declaration authorizing wider use of the Latin Mass, an older form of Catholic worship that includes a prayer read only on Good Friday for the conversion of the Jews.
washington | President Bush announced a major new initiative aimed at bolstering Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The plan included tens of millions in new funding for the Palestinian Authority, as well as $30 billion in new military aid to Israel and a reported $20 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The sale of arms to Saudi Arabia was seen as a way to entice Riyadh to attend an American-hosted international peace conference on Israel and the Palestinians in the fall.
hollywood, fla. | The Broward County School Board in South Florida approved two measures that gave a green light to the nation’s only Hebrew-language charter school. The Ben Gamla Charter School, which opened Aug. 20, is operated by a private company, Academica, under the direction of Adam Siegel, an Orthodox rabbi.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California