Buerger Bites

An Impressive Politician – At Last

We get a lot of politician making their way through our office, particularly during election season. That’s smart on their part because the Jewish community plays a central role in elections, and candidates want to state their case through the JEWISH TIMES. Over the years, we’ve met with everyone from presidential candidates to Baltimore City Council hopefuls.

When political scandals with politicians (see Larry Craig, David Vitter and Mark Foley) are more common than with professional athletes, things have gotten pretty bad. That’s reflected in how the combined approval rating for the President and Congress is only 60 percent.

So it was refreshing yesterday when Michael Sarbanes stopped in to share his agenda should he be elected to Baltimore City Council President. Michael was a year ahead of me at Gilman, and back then was known for his academic and athletic prowess.

Michael is the son of former Senator Paul Sarbanes. His brother, John, was elected to the U.S. House last year.

Michael has many well thought out ideas for reducing crime, lowering taxes, increasing business investment, and improving education. It may all sound a bit ambitious, but it was great to hear someone articulate such original thinking without any ego.

At a time when we like to pigeonhole people as black, white, red or whatever, Michael, who is white, has with his wife adopted three black African children. They all live in the predominately black of Irvington and attend both Greek and Methodist churches. Michael is Baltimore City.

We talk about the great promise our city has. It was impressive to meet with someone who really wants to make that happen. These quality type people are not usually found in local government.

Next week we meet with his opponent, Stephanie Rawlings Blake. We hope she can be as strong a candidate as Michael.

PR as a Weapon

PR As The Best Weapon

I’ve always said the Israel needed a better PR agent. After all it’s the best country on earth, and yet it’s had one of the worst international reputations.  Being in the media, I always wondered why Israel couldn’t find something to help them. 
Remember those Israelis that would come on TV with the heavy accidents explaining why they were killing innocent Palestinian children?
Enter The Israel Project.

In 2002, before, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi started TIP, only 40 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Israel. Since then, they have educated the international media, coach Israel spokespeople, and have assisted journalists in new gathering, all in the hopes of giving a more balance view of the Jewish State.
In 2007, one year after the Israeli war with Lebanon, over 60 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Israel. That makes them as popular as the American Congress and President combined. (I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a sad fact.)

As old Israeli leaders used to say, “Win the war, not spin.” It goes against the Israel grain to invest in PR. Why should we care what people think of us? Because too much is at stake Jennifer pointed out to a group of people today that it’s survival of the fittest. Congress wants to pass laws that are popular with its constituents to stay in office. If Israel has a high approval rating, it’s easy to pass pro-Israel laws and garner billions in aid.

Now, the issue of Iran is utterly important to Israel. We need to garner support to ensure Iran doesn’t get the capability to nuke Israel.

Why Jews Walk Away

The name Noah Feldman suddenly swirled around the country. He had written a lengthy story in the New York Times Sunday Magazine claiming he was edited out of a photo in his high school alumni publication. He believed it was because his fiancé, an Asian-American and non-Jew, was a no-no for his Orthodox Jewish day school.

It subsequently came out in reporting from the New York Jewish Week that perhaps a different photograph was used and his likeliness was not deleted.

Even if it were indeed the case that he was not deleted, for many American Jews it still strikes a chord as a symbol of inclusion. This is certainly not the first time someone’s made a claim of the organized Jewish community not accepting non-Jewish spouses.

I remember when I first returned to Baltimore a decade ago; a prominent Baltimore Jewish leader cornered me. She encouraged me not to allow the JEWISH TIMES to print engagement and wedding announcements for inter-married couples.

How crazy is that? These people wanted to broadcast their simchas to the Jewish community, and this woman wants us to tell them they’re not welcome? Please. The announcements should be used by rabbis for leads on outreach and conversion. Instead some of our “leaders” want these people shunned?

I read another sad story in last week’s New York Times. 

“Chris Schwarz, a freelance photographer who roamed the ancient heartland of Polish Jewry to record remnants of a disappeared people, then opened a museum to celebrate their cultural heritage, died July 29 at his home in Krakow, Poland. He was 59.”

According to the Times, he did a lot to bring Jewish culture back to Poland. Yet he couldn’t be buried in the Jewish cemetery there. The same cemetery that he helped rebuild with his photographs.

“Mr. Schwarz was buried Friday in a municipal cemetery in Krakow. By Jewish tradition, he cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery because his mother is Christian. In a short profile he wrote for his museum, Mr. Schwarz said, ‘’I am Jewish enough for the camps, but not for the rabbis.”

No wonder some of our young people are walking away from our community. If that’s your experience with the Jewish “leaders”, who would want to be part of a nation that would treat its people like this?

Boycott This!

Britain’s new University and College Union voted in advance a boycott of Israel’s academic institution in support the Palestinians’ plight. Our editorial page applauded the international backlash against the British.

Yesterday, the American Jewish Committee paid for a full-page ad in the New York Times written by Lee Bollinger of Columbia University and signed by 286 presidents of major U.S. universities asking to be boycotted as well.

The ad headline proclaimed, “Boycott Israeli Universities? Boycott Ours, Too!” It went on to say, “Boycott us, then, for we gladly stand together with our many colleagues in British, American and Israeli universities against such intellectually shoddy and politically biased attempts to hijack the central mission of higher education.”

By late yesterday afternoon, the AJC was flooded with phone calls of support and requests from 17 more universities, including Johns Hopkins, to join the list. Other local institutions had already signed on were Towson, Goucher, University of Baltimore, and University of Maryland – College Park and Baltimore County. More national institutions continue to join in.

It’s great to see such great support from our major intellectual institution showing solidarity for academic freedom, and recognizing that the Jewish state – with such wonderful and respected academic successes—is being unfairly singled out . It’s a nice twist given the perceived anti-Israel bias in academia.

Don’t Forget US

The two leading Baltimore mayoral candidates called for meetings with our Jewish leadership. Interim Mayor Sheila Dixon met with a group of Baltimore Jewish leaders last week, and the meeting with Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr., who’s currently a city councilman, was postponed due to high demand but too many vacations.

It’s a great sign that Dixon, the front-runner by a large margin, and Mitchell, the #2 candidate, find it important enough to have a dialogue with the Jewish community.

Of course, it’s no surprise that any candidate would say anything to get elected. The important thing is what happens with him or her once in office.

We saw our former mayor (and current governor) make his obligatory rounds in the Jewish community while campaigning for his first term and initially after he was elected.

Then, Martin O’Malley seemed to disappear. He took the Jewish community for granted. While he wasn’t bad for the Jewish community, he seemed to forget where we lived. O’Malley sightings became very infrequent in Upper Park Heights while he was in the later stages of his mayoral administration.

Even as governor, he hasn’t made a lot of outreach to the Jewish community. That may be because his Jewish liaison, Izzy Patoka, is far weaker then his counterparts in the Ehrlich administration and on the teams of Dixon and Mitchell.

Whoever becomes our next mayor, I hope that being part of the Jewish community is high on their agendas. We may be a minority, but we have long been part of the solution to building a great city.

And while our needs may be small in comparison to black-on-black crime, if the Jewish community is neglected, it would create huge problems for Baltimore.