Ohio Jewish chronicle. (Columbus, Ohio), 1982-09-02

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1982 -VELMA  AVE. ru*n
VOL. CO   NO. 35
SEPTEMBER 2,1982-ELUL14
Devoted to American
find Jewish Ideals.
BEHIND THE HEADLINES
Jewish Community In Lebanon Dwindles
er Israel's 'Operation Peace For Galilee'
VSlsbair ^^w
The 1982 R.E.W. Committee consists of: (seated)
Rabbi David Stavsky, Marsha Schiffman, Polly Haas,
(standing) Chairman Ron Golden, Dr. Fred Kape-
tansky, Sam Kandel and Dr. Jeff Tilson. Not pictured
are Donna Hara and David Goldmeier.
Beth Jacob Announces
Religious Emphasis Week
Beth Jacob Congregation's
Religious Emphasis Week
(R.E.W.) committee chairman, Ron Golden, has announced the. speakers for
this year's 24th annual program to be held at the Synagogue, Sept. 20 through Sept.
23.
The opening address,
sponsored by the Gertrude
Furman Levin Memorial
Fund, is to be delivered by
'ftabbi Joseph Grunblatt,
Queens Jewish Center, New
York City, on Monday, Sept.
20, at 8:30 p.m. at Beth Jacob
Synagogue. Rabbi Grunblatt, recognized as a deep
thinker with profound
insight into contemporary
problems, will explore the
complexities of the "inner
self" and the "outer self", as
they relate to the theme of
this year's program, "The
Quality of Life."
Chairman Golden said that
a Yiddish lecture will be pre
sented by Dr. Philip Singer,
Brooklyn, N.Y., as the featured address on Thursday,
Sept. 23, at 8:30 p.m., and
will be sponsored by Mr. and
Mrs. Bernard Gerson. A special invitation to this program has been extended to
the Russian-Jewish families
in Columbus as well as the
entire Jewish community.
Other highlights of the.
R.E.W. program this, year
are an address by Rabbi
David Stavsky to the teen-
aged youth on Tuesday,
Sept. 21, at 7:30 p.m., open to
the entire Jewish teen-aged
community, and the Sisterhood Luncheon on Wednesday, Sept. 22.
This year's R.E.W. committee members are David
Goldmeier, Poloy Haas,
Donna Hara, Sam Kandel,
Dr. Fred Kapetansky,
Marsha Schiffman and Dr.
Jeff Tilson.
JERUSALEM   (JTA)-A
group of well dressed men,
women and children sat on
the terrace of a coffee house
in Rosh Hanikra, Israel's
border point with Lebanon,
enjoying the view of the
coastal plain stretching all
the way to the gulf of Haifa.
The group, which seemed
like typical tourists who visit
the scenic border town, chatted in a mixture of Arabic
and French and occasionally
in  Hebrew.  They  were
indeed tourists but hardly
typical. They came from the
north, from Lebanon. Speaking in Arabic and French.
marked them as Lebanese
nationals. But their usage of
Hebrew indicated that they
were members of the small
Jewish community of Lebanon,  a  minuscule,, almost
nonexistent community.
No one knows exactly how
many Jews presently reside
in Lebanon, after the long
■p'nd bloody civil war. and
after the "Peace for Gal'ir
lee" operation, both of which
have left the country in
chaos. There are various
estimates, but all agree that
there are more than several
dozen Jews in the entire
country, with only six Jewish
families remaining in west
Beirut. Several other families are believed to reside in
east Beirut.
The group sitting on the
coffee house terrace in Rosh
Hanikra seemed to cohsti-
Rabbi Berman Named To Advisory Board
J-
Under the auspices and
with the support of the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, theFoundation for
Conservative Judaism in Israel has been formed. The
purpose of the Foundation is
to develop programs, educational and religious institutions for the Mesorati (Conservative) movement which
already has more than 40 affiliated congregations in Israel.
Rabbi Harold Berman of
Congregation Tifereth Israel
has been named to the Rabbinical Advisory board, together with 35 other rabbis
in the United States and Canada. Dr. David M. Cordis.
Already, the Conservative
movement in Israel operates
a network of educational and
youth programs designed to
introduce traditional Judaism to Israelis all over the
country. The World Council
of Synagogues operates a
Center  for  Conservative
Judaism in Jerusalem, and
the Jewish Theological Seminary maintains a Jerusalem
branch near the campus of
the Hebrew University,
Further goals of the Foundation are to establish ties
with the Kibbutz movement
and to expand programs so
that intellectual leadership
does not rest on visiting
Americans but can be taken
by Israelis of a new generation. For this, rabbis, educators and youth leaders will
have to be educated and
trained in Israel.
It is also hoped that the
Foundation for Conservative
Judaism will be helpful in
solving some of the legal
problems that Conserva
tive and Reform Jews face in
dealing with the Ministry of
Religions and other
branches on the Israeli
bureaucracy. Political and
legal activity in this area
will be undertaken in cooperation with other groups on
the Israeli scene.
Rabbi Berman received a
Master's Degree and Rabbinic Ordination from the
Jewish Theological
Seminary and spent a year
studying at the Seminary's
center in Israel. He has previously served on the staff of
Rabbi Harold Berman
the World Council of Synagogues, which is the inter
national organization of
Conservative Congregations
with offices in New York, Argentina and Israel.
>,
tute the bulk of Lebanese
Jewry. The group's members were quite tight-lipped
about their lives and the
lives of other Jews in Leba- -
non. They said they came to
see Israel, visit relatives and <*
then go back home, They
said their life in Lebanon
was good, business was good
and they would do a lot of
thinking befpre they would
decide to immigrate to
Israel.
A Steady Decline
Forty years ago there
were some 9,000 Jews in
Lebanon. About 2,000 Jews
emigrated after World War
II. The numbers of Jews between the end of the war and
now fluctuated, growing for
a while as refugees from
Syria and Iraq came to
Lebanon and declining again
as some of the wealthier
Jews left. By 1975, when the
civil war broke out, there
were between 2,000 and 4,000
Jews in the country. .
The civil war caused
another sizeable segment of
the Jewish community to
emigrate, leaving the community without a rabbi and a
ritual slaughterer. A rabbi
often had to be brought in
from Italy or Syria, as was a
ritual slaughterer. By the
end of the civil war in 1976,
only some 2,000 Jews were
left in the country. It was
often difficult to hold a minyan. The few remaining
Jews who still live in west
Beirut are mostly old, poor
and sick. The wealthy and
the young live in east Beirut.
Relations With Moslems
And Christians
The paradox of the Jewish
condition in Lebanon is that,
in spite of all the hardships
the country has suffered, the
Jews reportedly suffered
little because of their Jew-
ishness and relations with
both Moslems and Christians
were reportedly good.
At the height of the civil
war in Lebanon, the Jews of
Beirut took shelter in the
Magen Avraham Synagogue. The neighborhood in
which the synagogue was located was the scene of fierce
battles between the PLO and
the Phalangists. The rabbi
telephoned Premier Rashid
Karame to ask for help,
which he promised to send.
But before government
troops arrived, PLO leader
Yasir Arafat took the opportunity to make a humanitarian gesture by sending his
men with food for the Jews
trapped inside the synagogue and to make certain
that they were not harmed.
However, as the situation in
Beirut during the civil war
became unbearable, many
Jews fled to the mountains in
the east. When they returend
during a period of relative
calm, they found that most
of their property had been
plundered. Emigration continued after the civil war,
with Jews leaving for the
United States, Latin America, France and Israel. The
Lebanese authorities never
prevented them from
leaving.
Some Of The Synagogues   ..
Remaining
The Magen Avraham
Synagogue is located on
Wadi Abu Jamil St., once the
center of the Jewish quarter
in Beirut, now a predominantly Moslem Shiite area.
The street is close to the
city's commercial center,
near the "Green Line".dividing east and west Beirut, and
the scene •of frequent exchanges of fire between the
PLO arid Christian forces.
The synagogue was built in
1926, financed by Indian
Jews. It is a cream and
ochre-colored building, w[ith
Stars of David in its two
round windows. At the beginning of August, an Israeli
shell hit the roof of the synagogue during the heavy bom
bardment of the city, according to foreign press reports,
There are reportedly plans
to repair the damage, but it
might take quite a while to
do so.
There  are  other  synagogues in Bhamdoun, on the
Beirut-Damascus  highway,
and in Sidqn. The one in
Bhamdoun is described as
an  exceptionally  beautiful
synagogue.   The  terrorists
reportedly used it as a fortified position. They ripped up
prayer  books  and prayer
shawls. The Torah scrolls
had been removed earlier
when the Jewish community
left the town several years .
ago.
Jewish Communities
Disappearing
Until 1948, some 200 Jews
lived in the southern town of
Sidon. Then, as Palestinians
fled to the area from Israel,
most of the local Jewish
population  either left  the
, ■; country, took to the hills or
moved north to Beirut. When
Israeli forces captured the
town during the "Peace for
Galilee",  operation,   they
. found one Jewish family,
Jamilla Levy, a 52-year-bld
widow, and her four grown
children, livingina spacious
apartment overlooking the
port of Sidon.
Edwin Ellman Appointed
UJF Campaign Chairman
Federation President Bernard K. Yenkin today announced the appointment of
Edwin M. Ellman as 1983
United Jewish Fund Campaign Chairman. In making
the appointment, Yenkin
stated, "Ed's leadership in
past campaigns and in so
many other communal
causes, as well as his, intimate understanding of the
needs both within our local
agencies and in Israel, make
him a particularly appropriate choice to head the 1983
Campaign. The emergency
in Israel, with its negative
ramifications for Israel's
economy, makes it more urgent than ever that we have
a successful campaign with
maximum community participation, I know that under
Ed's leadership, we will
reach the kind of achievement that we need in these
difficult times."
Ellman returned just two
weeks ago from an emergency fact-finding mission to
Israel, in the course of which
he travelled not only through
Israel, but into Lebanon and
up to Beirut.
Ellman has served as a
Trustee of the Federation for
15 years and has been its
Vice President and Treasurer. He continues to serve
as Associate Chairman for
Edwin M. Ellman
the Jewish Center Building
Campaign and has been
Special Dinner Chairman for
the Israel Bonds Campaign.
Nationally, he is President
of the National Jewish Resource Center. His wife,
Geri, is currently President
of Jewish Family Servide.