Story and Photos by Diane Joy Schmidt
All Rights Reserved.   dianeschmidt22@hotmail.com.

When the Edict of Expulsion decreed that the Jews of Spain convert or be expelled by the Ninth of Av, the last day of July, 1492, some half a million Jews walked west into Portugal, north over the Pyrenees into France, and by boats from the ports in the south, some setting sail with Columbus. They left behind their homes and vineyards, and left Spain without its most skilled doctors, lawyers and merchants. It was a calamity, for both the Jews and for Spain. Spain has now offered the right of return and Spanish citizenship to all the descendants of these Spanish Jews, those of Sephardic origin, who can prove they are descended from those who were expelled or forced to convert, and who retain cultural or business ties to Spain.

The offer to apply for citizenship, which became law on October 1, 2015 and is good for the next three years, with the possibility of a one-year extension after Oct. 1, 2018, has been met with an entire range of emotions. For some here there is a deep sense of healing, interest, excitement and sense of opportunity, and increased curiosity and a heightened interest in learning about family roots. For others, understandably, there is some ambivalence. That ambivalence is freighted with a mixture, in no particular order of negation, of angst, anger, suspicion, cynicism and skepticism.

Luis Portero de la Torre, Special Counsel for the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain, is a lawyer from a distinguished family in Spain that today is Catholic but has Sephardic roots.  Driven by a personal tragedy, Portero became deeply involved in assisting the Federation to make improvements to, and to see the passage of the new law. He has now been traveling the world at his own expense, visiting cities with significant Sephardic synagogues in Israel, South America, Mexico and the U.S. to spread the word. And now, to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

On January 30, 2016 a small gathering of about 28 people, some coming from Colorado, were drawn to Albuquerque’s Congregation Nahalat Shalom to hear him speak. Portero’s youthful movie-star good looks, kind manner, and old world elegance graced the room at this historic moment.

During his 3-day visit here he also met privately with interested applicants and with genealogical societies. His visit was covered by the Santa Fe New Mexican and on the front page of the Albuquerque Journal. After the story was picked up by local TV stations, the Instituto Cervantes reported receiving upwards of 20 phone calls about their officially sanctioned Spanish language test and courses.

It requires a certain cataloging of one’s identity, both literally, and psychically, to determine if one is eligible. And, if one wants to take advantage of the three-year window of opportunity, and jump through the not-impossible hoops necessary to accomplish citizenship and acquire a dual passport of Spain, for oneself, for the benefit of one’s progeny, and or to honor one’s ancestors. The offer is not only for those who are Jews today, but also for those who today are of other faiths, but who can trace their ancestry back to the Expulsion and who continue to have links to Spain.

In summary, you will have to validate your Sephardic origins with two pieces of documentation, which may include a genealogy and a letter from the Jewish Federation testifying to your Sephardic heritage, two documents showing your current links to Spain, which might include coursework or business in Spain, pass an official Spanish language exam that is given only by the Instituto Cervantes, a Spanish organization, and which conveniently has a location here in Albuquerque at the Hispanic Cultural Center, to show that you can speak, read and write Spanish, and then also pass an online multiple-choice civics exam in Spanish, submit a U.S. passport and birth certificate, a clean criminal FBI record issued within six months of filing the application, have all your records translated into Spanish and both the translations and the documents apostilled here, digitized as .pdfs and submitted online, and then travel to Spain to appear before a notary with your original documents, where you will also be the subject of two criminal background checks, one by the State, and one by the intelligence services. After that, Portero said, you can be like James Bond, with two passports. An outline of these steps and community resources follows this article, and additional information is at the Nahalat Shalom congregation website http://www.nahalatshalom.org.

Sara Koplik, Director of Community Outreach of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, is arranging for Albuquerque to serve as a hub for people in the region who are interested in applying, in a relationship that is being established between the Federation here and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain. Koplik is organizing a review committee to assist with letters of approval, and she said that once you have prepared your documents, to email Kristen Gurule at the Federation here to make an appointment, at Kristen@jewishnewmexico.org, or call 505-821-3214.

The law has only been in effect for four months. Portero said that as of January 9^th,  859 people have opened applications, and 211 have actually uploaded all their documentation. Of these, the most applications have come from Argentina (107), followed by Israel (73), the U.S. (59), Venezuela (46), Brazil (29) and Mexico (25). 4,300 people who had applied over the past years were granted citizenship on Oct. 2, as this new law came into effect. There is the expectation that up to 70,000 may apply worldwide.

Ron Duncan Hart, Gaon Books publisher in Santa Fe, in discussing a ketubah from the 13^th century that will be in the upcoming “Fractured Faiths” exhibit at the New Mexico History Museum tracing the Sephardim through the New World to New Mexico, brought out that “One of the documents that is being accepted as proof of being a Sephardic Jew is having been married with a Castilian ketubah, which is still in use today in the Sephardic world. Our daughter was married with a Castilian ketubah (in Morocco). On another note, her father-in-law there was among the first 4,300 recently granted Spanish citizenship under the law of return. He had to prepare a set of documents showing his synagogue membership and involvement in the Jewish community, including the ketubah with which he was married.”

Hart continued, “There are many Sephardic Jews from Morocco and Israel on the list of those given citizenship, and among the Moroccans many are buying properties in southern Spain. The town of Marbella now has two Sephardic synagogues because of the large number of Moroccans who have bought properties and are living part of the year there, if not full time. It is an interesting process to watch, and it is bringing Jewish investment back to Spain.”

An economic benefit may have been a deciding factor for the Spanish government today to go ahead with the new law, but in the eyes of some in America, this has also cast aspersions on the purity of their motives. Addressing this criticism, Portero pointed out that Spain didn’t just come up with this recently, but has done many things in the last two centuries to address the wrongs of the past.

One act was a royal decree of the Spanish dictator, Primo de Rivera, in 1924, granting the right of return, which some 3,000 Sephardim took advantage of, and which later resulted, said Portero, in “saving thousands of Jews from the Holocaust in the Second World War, by applying the royal decree of Primo de Rivera, when the Spanish diplomat, Ángel Sanz-Briz, the angel of Budapest, and many others in Paris and Lisbon, saved many Jews from the Nazis by giving them Spanish passports. They applied the royal decree of Primo de Rivera. . . .This law is the result of a long process of rapprochement to the Sephardic Jews. . . The new law simply seeks to permanently close the wounds caused by one of Spain’s largest mistakes in its history.”

Because a Spain passport is an EU passport, in Europe this means being able to live and work throughout its 28 member countries, within their respective laws, and also has benefits in non-EU countries like Norway. Since this is a dual passport, you do not give up your current citizenship. You do not have to live or work in Spain, and do not pay taxes in Spain unless you do. On the other hand, you can if you want to, and attend university and enjoy the benefits of socialized health care. And, unlike Israel, it does not require that you prove you currently are Jewish.

Especially meaningful for the Crypto-Jewish community

Maria Sanchez, LPCC, is a mental health therapist and pastoral counselor who also is a Crypto-Jew, one of the hidden Jews of New Mexico whose family passed down its Jewish identity in secret from generation to generation through one member. She came to hear Portero and said, “It was very meaningful. I knew that the King of Spain had taken down the Edict of Expulsion in the 80’s and that the Pope had made amends, but to have something like this—to have Spain reach all the way here, and say hey, we are looking for you, here are some open doors, we want to say, ‘Forgive us.’ For some of us, who knows, we can do international trade. I think it’s an opportunity. Maybe some of us feel there’s that distrust of Spain — that probably goes through every Jew, not just Sephardim — ‘what are they going to do with us’ there’s that feeling — because I think every Jew has that — do we trust where we have been chased from?’”

Sanchez met one-on-one with Portero the next day, who said she would have no problem in applying, and she is now preparing her application and those of other family members.

Her grandmother’s family name, Toledo, comes from Toledano, which she traces to the rabbinical line, and she explained that the rabbis were the ones who felt most strongly the need to maintain and to hide their identities and their Torahs when they came here. “Here it was passed down through the women, women rabbis,” said Sanchez.

Sanchez maintains that it is not a problem to establish one’s Sephardic genealogy. “It’s very easy, once you plug into the families, it’s like when somebody weaves a rug, it all interrelates. Those people who are involved in the land grants here, because they had to get the land grants from the king and queen of Spain, and the person who got that for us was Gabriel Sanchez, the treasurer of Spain, and he himself was a converso.”

The experts step in

When Stan Hordes became New Mexico State Historian he began to publish his exhaustive research that brought the story of the Crypto-Jews into the media spotlight, and his book “To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico,” was published in 2005.
Schelly Talalay Dardashti, a native New Yorker who arrived in New Mexico less than a decade ago, recently founded with several friends the Jewish Genealogical Society of New Mexico, which she said “meets at Congregation Albert the fourth Sunday of the month, barring the Apocalypse or Jewish holidays.” Dardashti, who is the U.S. Genealogy Advisor for the global online genealogy company MyHeritage.com, pressed Portero on the importance of using DNA research, which, so far, is not accepted as evidence by Spain for citizenship applications.

She met together with Portero and with Henrietta Martinez Christmas, president of the New Mexico Genealogical Society, and Yvette Kohen Stoor, who produces Primeras Familias certificates for those who have traced their genealogies here.

Dardashti said, “Most of the genealogies of New Mexico are basically oral histories because most documents were destroyed during the Pueblo revolt, which occurred throughout New Mexico. But by searching baptismal and land records, some families have been able to piece together their family histories. The other route is to search the archival records in Spain” through a researcher there.

Dardashti said also that Assistant State Historian Rob Martinez has done extensive work regarding the New Mexico Crypto-Jews, and that he recently returned from a trip to Mexico City to obtain copies of Inquisition documents and other records, which will be presented in a talk for the New Mexico Genealogical Society March 5th, 2016.

Relevance for the Ashkenazi community

Sephardic roots resonate also for those in the Ashkenazi community here. American Book Award-winning author Maria Espinosa’s historical novel set in Inquisition times, Incognito: Journey of a Secret Jew, addresses the effects of concealing one’s identity in order to survive. Espinosa, who grew up identifying mostly with her Polish ancestry, began to be troubled by a painting that hung in her family’s house.

“There was so much secrecy on my mother’s side of the family, the fear of another pogram, always a need to live near borders. A painting from the 18^th century of my family’s family from Spain, hung in our house. The original is in a museum in Brussels. I would ask my mother about it, and later my uncle, who would only both say that the family left Spain ‘because they wanted to have more freedom of expression.’ Why are they being so gentile about it? It goes back 500 years, this fear and secrecy has persisted, but we wanted to mingle with society. Writing the book made me aware on a deeper level. I think it made me much more aware of how traumas persist for so many years and generations.”

For Luis Portero de la Torre, who has spent his own money, already over 100,000 euros, to reach out to Sephardic communities around the world, his involvement in and connection to this project has very personal roots – the trauma of his father’s assassination by the Basque terrorist group ETA. “On my father’s side I come from a family of Jews, of Toledo. There have been plenty of doctors and lawyers on my father’s side. I guess that we converted to Christianity because we are Catholics, but we have always been pro-Jews, always, the Portero family.

“The other reason I’m doing this is it may close the cycle of a personal project that I have with my brother Daniel to take to court and judge the leaders of ETA, the Basque terrorist group, that assassinated my father on the ninth of October, of 2000.” Luis Portero was chief prosecutor of the Andalusian Supreme Court, and was assassinated as he entered his home in Granada. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) condemned ETA for the murder.

***related New Mexico community resources and  upcoming events:

Jewish Federation of New Mexico http://www.jewishnewmexico.org/ email Kristen@JewishNewMexico.org

Congregation Nahalat Shalom website http://www.nahalatshalom.org Articles and information about Spanish citizenship for Sephardim. Friday night services, on the second Friday of the month is a  Sephardic/Anusim/Converso/Crypto-Jewish Shabbat Dinner. Potluck dinner at 6:30, candle lighting promptly at 7:00, meets in the building on the north side of the courtyard.

Maria Sanchez, Ed.D, LPCC – Crypto-Jewish heritage and resources. A group of those who wish to prepare their detailed genealogical records is currently meeting. Call (505) 331-2401 for more information.

Maria Apodaca, Festival Djudeo-Espanyol Event Coordinator, B’nai-Anusim, Crypto-Jewish heritage, Albuquerque, and Nahalat Shalom member. 505-235-8252, apodacam2003@yahoo.com

Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Jewish Genealogical Society of New Mexico, email Schelly at JGSNM@tracingthetribe.com She is also U.S. Genealogy Advisor for MyHeritage.com and hosts Tracing the Tribe, a Jewish genealogy site on Facebook.

“DNA, GENETICS and GENEALOGY: WHAT IT MEANS AND FINDING NEW MEXICO FAMILY CONNECTIONS” Bennett Greenspan, President of Family Tree, will share his genetic expertise for novice/experienced genealogists and DNA fans. Event sponsored by the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society, Feb 28, 2016. Pre-Registration required at www.nmjhs.org. Further info: Murray Tucker, (505)982-3451, or Isabelle Medina Sandoval, (505)474-5221 E-mail: murtuc1@gmail.com, isantadoval@msn.co

The Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies http://cryptojews.com/  2016 SCJS Annual Conference June 26-28 Santa Fe, NM “Redefining Crypto-Judaic Identity: Then and Now”

The New Mexico Genealogical Society www.nmgs.org

Norma Libman, lecturer and journalist, will be giving a talk at the Taste of Honey, Jewish Community Center, February 21, 2016 “Spain and the Jews: Then and Now. Should Jews Return to Spain?” http://www.jccabq.org  View Taste of Honey brochure: http://www.jccabq.org/main/display_pdf.php?event_id=696  Call Program Director Phyllis Wolf, JCC 505-348-4500 or phyllisw@jccabq.org.

“Fractured Faiths: Spanish Judaism, The Inquisition, and New World Identities” Exhibition opens May 22, 2016, History Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe.

Ron D. Hart, Publisher Gaon Books www.gaonbooks.com

Instituto Cervantes Albuquerque, NM  http://albuquerque.cervantes.es/

***
Here is a brief outline of the steps for citizenship:

1. Two pieces of documentation that you are of Sephardic heritage. These may include a genealogy and a letter from a Sephardic rabbi or president of a Sephardic congregation.
2. Two documents that show your links to Spain today, which might be, for example, a degree in Spanish culture, donations to a Sephardic synagogue, or business with Spain.
3. These documents must be translated into Spanish and both the translation itself and the document must have an official government stamp called an apostille. If the translation is done by one of Spain’s officially recognized translators, then the translation doesn’t need to be apostilled, but the translated document itself still does. The Office of the Secretary of State is the only office in New Mexico authorized to issue a certification, or apostille, for a notarized document going to a foreign country. The charge for each document is $3.00.
4. You will also have to take a Spanish language exam to show that you can speak, read and write, and pass at the A2 level. This is an oral and written exam that is only given at the Instituto Cervantes, a Spanish government organization. There is an Instituto Cervantes at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, website http://albuquerque.cervantes.es 724-4777. At the website is a link, “Passport to Sepharad” to special classes they have to prepare for these exams.
5. Pass an online multiple-choice civics exam in Spanish, for a fee of $85. You can take it twice. The exam has 25 questions. To pass, you must get at least 15 right.
6. A valid original U.S. passport and birth certificate.
7. An FBI criminal background check, which is only valid for six months from its date of issuance.
8. These will all then need to be digitized, and saved as individual .pdf files. You will submit all these documents online. There is a $100 Euro fee for the application.
9. After this process is completed, you will then need to go to Spain with all your original documents and appear before a notary public there.
10. Your application for citizenship may take up to a year. There will also be two criminal background checks in Spain, one by the state and one by the intelligence services.
11. Once you receive notice that you are approved, by email, you will need to, in person, get your passport at a Spain consulate or perhaps, the Honorary Consulate of Spain in Albuquerque. There are nine Spain consulates in the U.S., at the embassy in Washington D.C., and in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, New Orleans, Chicago, Miami, Boston and New York, and there are 27 honorary consulates around the country.

“After 523 years, Spain offers citizenship to descendants of those who fled Inquisition,” New Mexico Jewish Link Quarterly, March,  2016 and online NewMexicoJewishelink.com Albuquerque, NM

Published “Spain Re-invites the Jews,” Intermountain Jewish News, L’Chaim Special Section, Denver, Colorado March, 2016

 

 

After failing to pass their anti-Israel boycott resolutions last year, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) returned, at the final meeting of the undergraduate ASUNM student senate on April 22, 2015 to present their Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions resolution 12S, and again asked that the University of New Mexico divest from investments in corporations with ties to Israel.

Lobos for Israel Lobos president Andrew Balis speaks first at ASUNM senate hearing in opposition to SJP BDS resolution April 22, 2015

The meeting got started at 6 pm in the UNM Student Union Building, and following a drawn-out debate, the resolution failed at 9:45 PM by a large majority, with 14 votes against, 4 in favor, and 2 abstentions. As soon as their resolution 12S failed, the SJP supporters left the room en masse.
Following the defeat of 12S, the boycott resolution, Senator Caleb Heinz introduced emergency resolution 13S which asked for transparency by the university on all its investments and that would make it accountable in general about all human rights violations. Written by Heinz, 13S was quickly passed by the senate. The UNM Daily Lobo completely failed to report on this important resolution.
As the hearing commenced, the room became stifling, packed with about 70 observers, mostly SJP students and their outside supporters, who were mostly respectful as Lobos for Israel and SJP were each allowed 6 speakers who alternated for three minutes each. Then each of the 20 senators spoke, some of who gave their time to more students who wished to speak.

Hillel student Ezra Rabinsky addresses ASUNM

The six students who spoke against the boycott included Lobos for Israel President Andrew Balis, Emelie Mendelsohn, Rose Davenport, Isai Garcia, Fran Narain and Ezra Rabinsky. Their small group of supporters in the room included Hillel director Sara Koplik, Paula and Mel Schwartz, Attorneys Jeffrey Diamond and John Wertheim, UNM Professor Emeritus of History Noel Pugach, and Anti-Defamation League Director Suki Halevi, who brought a letter signed by 11 rabbis and 13 Jewish leaders across New Mexico in support of Lobos’ for Israel opposition to divestment that was read by Fran Narain.

Community supporters of Lobos for Israel ADL Director Suki Haveli, Attorney Jeffry Diamond, Lobos for Israel student Isai Garcia, observer Frank Morgan

Of the six SJP speakers, there was one undergraduate Palestinian student, and three Jewish speakers, including two students and longtime community member Jewish Voices for Peace adult representative Stanley Hordes.

As the lengthy debate got underway, Senator Travis Gonzalez, a graduate of Rehoboth Christian High School in Gallup, originally from Idaho and new to the senate this year, commented, “I personally think the issue isn’t divestments, but the transparency of our administration – where our investments are going. Transparency is the issue, before divestments.”

By portraying the SJP resolution as seeking justice and human rights for Palestinians being repressed by what they characterize as an apartheid, colonialist occupier of their land, and calling for a boycott of companies investing in Israel with language taken from the playbills of earlier civil rights movements, SJP has enlisted sympathetic support from a number of other student groups at UNM. One speaker from MEChA, the Chicano student activist organization, said “If you supported Ceasar Chavez, you should support this resolution.” Inaccurate parallels made to the U.S. border with Mexico, and academic rhetoric that attempts to portray Israel as white, have struck a chord with minority students on campus.

The comments by student supporters of the boycott resolution focused on wrongs by Israel and stressed that “there is an occupation.” The corporations they singled out in the BDS resolution presented here, as it is at other campuses, include Hewlett-Packard, whose “biometric components at checkpoints scan your fingerprints and your face,” and G4S, an international security corporation that is also employed along the U.S.-Mexico border.
A Hispanic representative of the Dream Team speaking on behalf of SJP’s boycott resolution said “The UNM Dream Team is in favor of divestment from companies that invest in human rights violations.” The Dream Team is a student club at the University of New Mexico whose mission is “to advocate for immigration reform and to increase access and success for immigrant students and families at the university.” They also spoke in support of the SJP BDS resolution last year.

Lobos for Israel Mexican American student Isai Garcia addresses inaccurate parallels with U.S. Mexico border and Israel-Palestinian barrier

Lobos for Israel Mexican American student Isai Garcia directly addressed the border issue and comparisons being made to the barrier in Israel.  Saying that he has been in this country for more than ten years, Garcia explained, “I unfortunately have experienced many types of discrimination, for being Latin, and most importantly for being Jewish.”

He continued from his prepared statement, “Just as I stood in front of most of you last year I stand again in front of you … to inform about the real situation that is happening in the border of Israel and Palestine, which does not compare to the situation that we witness every day between the Mexico and U.S. border. . .”

He went on to explain that the barrier in Israel, which prevents snipers and suicide bombers, is completely different in its construction compared with the barrier here, which he said, “…does not protect U.S. citizens from terrorist attacks, it simply prevents hard-working people to come and better their lives.”
Garcia, a junior majoring in civil engineering, said that he was grateful to be at the University of New Mexico and urged the senators not to support a resolution that he said would create a hostile environment like he faced when he lived in Arizona. In closing he spoke in Spanish to the senators, saying “Many thanks for the opportunity to express my opinion and allowing my voice to be heard.”

ASUNM Senators Bisaan Hanouneh (left), Ashley Hawney, Gabriela Eldredge

The digital revolution was in evidence throughout the meeting, as students feverishly tweeted and texted.  One particularly tense moment came when Senator Ashley Hawney, a sophomore from California who said she came to UNM because of the Sign Language Institute here, expressed outrage when she saw that the SJP group had completely twisted her words online. Hawney concluded, “We need to create something bigger than these two groups.”

The Lobos for Israel students stressed to the senate that SJP activities are creating an atmosphere of hostility on campus for Jewish students.

SJP supporter puts camera in face of eLink reporter

Senators who spoke out against the resolution said that it discriminated against Jewish students on campus. As Senator Mack Follingstead said to the assemblage, “Divestment will only divide the student body.”

Student senators also perceived that it singled out Israel while not addressing a single other corporation’s investments in other countries around the world whose civil rights violations are significantly greater.

Senator Gabriela Eldredge, in commenting on the resolution, stressed that any resolution the ASUNM passed needed to be their own opinion – not SJP’s – or Lobos for Israel. “Empathy to all,” is how she characterized earlier resolutions they had passed that year, supporting undocumented, indigenous and African-American students “without polarization.”  She noted that “passage of these resolutions did not cause a climate of feat. This resolution can do this.” Eldredge made the important point that there was “perception versus intention,” with the potential of creating a “negative effect on our campus.”
Attorney John Wertheim, observing the student senate, commented, “It’s very encouraging to watch them.” Halevi said, as she watched the proceedings, “These students have a lot of integrity.”

SJP texts and tweets in background while Sen. Brianna Mulligan listens to speaker

The university has not taken a stand against SJP activity on campus. While SJP’s boycott resolutions, if passed, would in practicality have no legal authority unless voted on by the board of regents, their activities are succeeding here and at other campuses in demonizing and delegitimizing Israel, and making Jewish students who speak out in classes to defend against these attacks feel traumatized and stigmatized.

Students at Hillel described the atmosphere in the American Studies department at UNM as toxic, saying that one Jewish student who took a class there this year found himself constantly on the defensive in class in trying to address inaccurate accusations against Israel.
The American Studies Association passed a boycott of Israeli scholars in mid-December 2013. Following other universities who condemned the boycott, on January 10, 2014 the University of New Mexico issued a statement signed by the university president and vice-president saying that they did not support academic boycotts. The ASA academic  boycott has been condemned by 250 universities, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale and MIT, and a letter signed by 134 members of Congress (69 Democrats, 65 Republicans) called the boycott “thinly veiled bigotry.”

The growing popularity of SJP was in evidence on the front page coverage by the Daily Lobo campus newspaper following the event. It characterized the SJP resolution as a vote for transparency, and downplayed that it was a boycott against Israel. Their April 24 lead story, titled “Resolution irresolution; ASUNM fails call for divestment after hours-long debate” led off with a caption for the prominent front page photo that read, “Sandra Akkad, an elementary education graduate student, listens as ASUNM senators discuss Resolution 12S. If it had passed, the resolution would have asked UNM to be transparent with its investments.”

The article went on to state that “The legislation would have called upon the University to be transparent in its investments, and it specifically urged UNM to pressure companies, such as Hewlett Packard and Caterpillar contributing to the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine.” Even more significantly, the report completely left out that following the defeat of the SJP boycott resolution, the senate passed emergency resolution 13s calling for transparency about all of UNM’s investments.

 

A Call for Accountability and Transparency of All University Investments

Student Senator Travis Gonzales from Gallup supports separate transparency resolution 13S

Immediately after the pro-SJP students deliberately filed out following the defeat of their resolution at 9:45 PM, the student senate swiftly passed emergency resolution 13S, sponsored by undergraduate senator Caleb Heinz, that asks that the UNM Foundation provide accountability and transparency and a list of all corporations the university invests in.
Heinz said by email that he wrote the resolution, and that:

“It was created from a response to the growing hostility I was seeing from multiple students towards each other and some surprising information I learned about the UNM Foundation itself that was not in, or a focus of, Resolution 12S.

“The student organization’s passion for these things is what creates the heart of any resolution or appropriation, but when that passion comes in conflict with another group’s resistance, it is the job of any democratic government, student or not, to come to a compromise. That was the heart of the resolution.

“It clarified what Resolution 12S stated in the action clauses but shifted the focus from a specific place and culture committing rights violations to our own University’s accountability of their investments in unethical corporations. In my personal opinion it was a divestment and accountability resolution with a unifying purpose.”

 

Because there is a standing committee already in place at the UNM Foundation examining the issue of investment transparency, the New Mexico Jewish eLink asked the university if action is underway in response to resolution 13S.

A foundation spokesperson responded that they had not formally received the resolution 13S from ASUNM, but that they do have a committee, and in a statement issued for the Link, said:
“The committee you are referring to was not formed in response to this resolution. The UNM Foundation’s Board of Trustees has been considering the topic of divestment based on social, corporate, environmental or governance issues since early 2013.

“In January 2015, the Board of Trustees formed a subcommittee to fully study these issues in depth. The investment subcommittee is comprised of Foundation Investment Committee representatives, faculty, and students to review this topic in detail.  Once this issue has been fully reviewed, the subcommittee, through the UNM Foundation Board of Trustees, will provide a recommendation to the UNM Board of Regents on this specific topic.”

Resolution Pulled from Graduate Student Association
A resolution filed by SJP also was expected at the final meeting of the Graduate Professional and Student Association on May 2. However, the SJP resolution was pulled by its senate sponsor because it was incorrectly formatted, and so no vote on it was taken there this year. Last year, the vote initially passed, and then at a subsequent meeting was rescinded.

While this year the level of intensity and drama was significantly lower than it was last year, it is expected that the SJP will be back again next year with their boycott resolutions against Israel.

Background on the BDS Movement

The movement known as Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanctions (BDS) is considered the “soft war” against Israel. As anti-Israel boycotts in the U.S. found limited traction over the last sixty years, a strategy in 2010 shifted the focus to campus groups. According to an ADL information bulletin, SJP came under the “influence and coordination of a national organization called American Muslims for Palestine, a group that promotes extreme anti-Israel views.” SJP was a fragmented group founded at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001. “In 2010, AMP decided to focus specifically on Palestinian advocacy on college campuses and targeted SJP for this effort.” 40 chapters attended the first national SJP conference at Columbia University in New York in 2011. A wave of boycott resolutions has followed on college campuses annually to this day.
The first SJP resolution hit UNM in dramatic fashion last year, but was failed by both the undergraduate ASUNM and the Graduate Professional and Student Association (GPSA). (See New Mexico Jewish Link  stories: May, 2014 “The Anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement arrives at UNM,” and June/July, 2014 “UNM’s Graduate Student Association Votes to Rescind anti-Israel Resolution.”)*

Rabbinical and Jewish Communal Support for Lobos for Israel
The letter brought by ADL’s regional director Suki Halevi that was signed by 11 rabbis and 13 Jewish community leaders was read aloud to the senate by Lobos for Israel student Fran Narain and distributed to the senators and is reprinted in the Link.

Additional comments appended to the letter were united in support for Israel while offering a diversity of perspectives:

Rabbi Rosenfeld and Cantor Finn wrote, “As the clergy of Congregation Albert, the oldest and largest Jewish congregation in Mexico, we completely and fervently endorse the statement supporting Lobos for Israel in their opposition to any divestment resolution proposed to the University of New Mexico student senate. We strongly endorse the statement made by Jewish community leaders throughout the state.”
ADL Regional Director Suki Halevi emphasized: “Divestment resolutions targeting Israel do nothing to promote peace. BDS campaigns are a hostile tactic that rests on a fundamental rejection of Israel’s right to exist or defend itself. Instead of divestment, concerned individuals should promote initiatives that build connections, encourage interaction, foster relationships and help prepare both societies for peace.”

Peter Weinreb, Former Secretary, New Mexico Human Rights Coalition; Former Chair, New Mexico Anti-Defamation League; Former Secretary, Jewish Federation of New Mexico, penned a thoughtful note that said, “I join the members of Lobos for Israel in their opposition to the divestment resolution. The students offering the resolution need to look beyond biased votes in the United Nations and ill-advised settlements. A peaceful future for both the Israelis and the Palestinians requires that both parties acknowledge that they have both been on the land for millennia. Both parties must find a way to live with the other. Both parties must find a way to convince their political leaders to reach an accommodation. The proposed resolution will not advance that goal.”

While the students did not refer to it, the boycott resolutions follow a pattern set in the United Nations where alleged human rights violations by Israel are the constant target of resolutions, while any other country is given only a second thought.

 

 

 

 

New America Media/New Mexico Jewish Link          January, 2016    

      Albuquerque’s Shalom House is among the dwindling number of affordable senior-housing developments in the U.S. But a vacuum in senior housing remains as Albuquerque’s Jewish artists and spiritual seekers age. Shalom House is the taller building to the right, the lower building set back to the left is the Jewish Community Center. Photos © 2016 by Diane Joy Schmidt

1st place – Health articles (2) New Mexico Press Women, 2017, Judge’s comment: “This entry earned a first-place award based on the article, “Albuquerque, Is it a place Jews can retire?” Well organized, clearly stated thesis, concise, clear writing mark this article.” entered along with “Studies on Dementia – Q&A with Dr. Gary Rosenberg“

Albuquerque – Is it a place where Jews can retire?            

This writer, pondering her own fate, asked the board member what she should plan to do when she reaches into her 90s. Reflecting the frustrations of those who have been dealing with these issues for many years without seeing any public policies put in place that would offer solutions, the board member tartly—and somewhat ambiguously—replied, “By then, there’ll be a pill for that.”

By Diane Joy Schmidt

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.–As we drive past by the David Specter Shalom House without giving it much thought, people in Albuquerque’s Jewish community might be feeling reassured as they or their parents age, that if they need it there will be some sort of low-cost residential independent housing for them.

They may, in fact, be surprised to find such housing is very scarce here.

Although rumors circulating last fall that Shalom House was about to close turned out to be false, most older adults will find very little low-rent housing for seniors 62 and older living in Albuquerque.

That’s a concern not only for local seniors, but for the many baby boomers who moved here from large cities with expectations about aging in a slower, kinder environment.

However, good, well-maintained, subsidized independent-living housing is rare. Shalom House has an average three-year waiting period for available units with 15 currently on the list hoping to move in. The building is one of only 42 federally subsidized senior apartment developments in New Mexico. And commercial retirement complexes are priced out of reach for many.

National Senior-Housing Shortage

It’s not just a problem here, but is growing nationally. A 2014 study [http://bit.ly/1q7rYIk] by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and AARP Foundation concluded that even with the rapid growth of the 50-plus population in the United States, “Housing that is affordable, physically accessible, well-located and coordinated with supports and services is in too short supply.”

This is partly because in 2012 Congress voted to discontinue funds [http://bit.ly/10rJwWi] for new senior housing programs that finance the building of and rental assistance for subsidized housing. These tax incentives to private affordable housing developers were done under Section 202 of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for senior housing.

Although the government is continuing limited funds for existing rental subsidies as well as building repairs, when these Sec. 202 contracts come up for renewal around the country, developers are increasingly declining to renew them in order to convert the buildings for market-rate rentals or condo sales. Seniors in many cities are being been evicted if they can’t pay the escalated costs.

In Detroit, for example, more than 100 long-time senior residents were forced to move out [http://tinyurl.com/psmx3a6] suddenly last year when their building was sold in downtown Detroit. Because the area is experiencing a revitalization causing market rates to climb, the owner of the HUD senior building chose to sell to developers.

Elders who had lived there for decades received 120-day notices to move. Although they have federal rental vouchers, many could not find units they could afford in the area within the subsidy amounts.

In the study, “Senior Housing at a Crossroads,” Wayne State University researcher Tam E. Perry noted that nationally as few as one-percent of nonprofit Sec. 202 property owners have opted out when their HUD contracts have come up for renewal.

But the report states that the Detroit building conversion shows, “It is not assured that these projects will continue to serve low income seniors after they are eligible to opt out of the program.”

Rumors Put to Rest

Albuquerque’s Shalom House sits just to the south of the Jewish Community Center on Wyoming Blvd. Rumors circulated last fall–increasing community members’ concern — that Shalom House was going to close some time in 2016.

Putting those rumors to rest, Judy Weinreb, board president of the nonprofit Jewish Community Housing Corporation (JCHC) that runs Shalom House, said in a telephone interview, “Shalom House has just renewed certifications for the next 10 years.”

The development has 47 total units, with a maximum occupancy of 70 people [http://affordablehousingonline.com/housing-search/New-Mexico/Albuquerque/David-Specter-Shalom-House-Apartments/27103/].

Because the development was ultimately built with federal funds under the Section 202 program and with Title IX’s Civil Rights requirements, it could not give any preference to Jewish residents.

Jennie Negin, 76, a JCHC board member and a former president of Jewish Family Services, fondly recalled that her mother was the very first resident of Shalom House, saying, “She loved it.”

However, over time the number of Jewish residents dwindled. Today, not more than 4 or 5 of the residents are Jewish, less than 10%.

Weinreb and Negin both stressed, though, that Shalom House has its roots in the traditional Jewish mission of tikkun olam, which means “repair of the world”– whether it serves Jewish people or others.

Section 202 Housing

HUD’s Sec. 202 program includes tax credits for affordable-housing developers, plus special rental assistance for those who qualify to move in. At least one resident of a unit must be 62 or older and each household can have no more than 50 percent of the area’s median income.  That program subsidy allows the renter to pay no more than 30 percent of his or her income for rent while the government pays the difference–up to a point.

Federal inspections rated Shalom House very well at 93.85 in 2008, above the national average score of 81.08 and the area’s average of 82.28. Shalom House does not provide assisted living services.

By 2025, the JCHC will pay off the Shalom House mortgage. Weinreb and Negin both stressed that the board intends to keep the facility as subsidized housing long into the future. There is clearly no plan to convert the property to market–rate housing, nor is it likely feasible to do so.

Weinreb also addressed the issue of who owns Shalom House. Members of the Jewish community have long assumed the land and building are owned or controlled by the Jewish Federation and or the Jewish Community Center.

Weinreb said, “We’re a separate 501c3. To obtain the financing, the nonprofit has to own the building and own the land; it wouldn’t happen any other way.”

She emphasized that JCHC owns the building and property and that neither the Federation nor the JCC have any say in what happens to it, although the organizations have a cordial relationship. She said she recently had a long meeting with new Federation Director Zach Benjamin and gave him a tour of the facility.

Furthermore, Weinreb noted JCHC’s long-term commitment and said the group renewed its most recent federal paperwork for the maximum 10 years allowed, not the shorter five-year option.

History of Shalom House, and where are those papers?

There’s disagreement about who actually owns the property that needs to be resolved before the future of Shalom House is clear. Could the Federation borrow against the property to build the Jewish Home? If the JCHC, the Jewish Community Housing Corporation, ‘owns’ it, once the mortgage is paid off, where does that excess income flow to? And if they were to convert, and sell it, where does that money go? And what is the value of that land today?

Harold Albert, who was president of the development corporation that built Shalom House and signed the incorporation papers, explained its history and also addressed the issue of ownership.
Albert, who lives much of the time in Florida, happened to be town in early January when reached by phone. He said, “In the 1950’s David Specter had a mother who needed a Jewish Home for the Aged and there was nothing in New Mexico, so he turned to Arizona [for a residence for his mother].”

Specter made a large parcel of land available here in Albuquerque. “Then 10 men got together to put a down payment on this piece of land, which at the time was in the middle of nowhere. The land was to be used for a Jewish Home for the Aged. The project languished for a number of years. Since the land was just languishing in that corporation, we decided to transfer that land to the Federation.

“Then in the ’70s, we decided we wanted to fulfill the original intent of the purchasers of the land, and decided on a housing project for senior citizens. We felt an obligation to fulfill that intention to build a Jewish Home for the Aged.

So we heard at that time federal funds were available, Section 202 housing financing. As the president of the development corporation – I had incorporated it – all the land is owned by the Jewish Federation, the part of the land where the Shalom House is, we had to deed that land to the Shalom House corporation.”

When presented with Weinreb’s fait accompli, her statement that the JCHC owns Shalom House and the land under it, Albert mused as to whether the land was deeded or leased to that entity, and he took the opportunity to search for the records at the Jewish Community Center.

Afterwards, he said, “I went through the storage units and (JCC President) Dave Simon was kind enough to open them. I went through four big storage lockers. There were boxes and boxes. We couldn’t find any of those records.”

He is now taking steps to track down the original papers he signed, and we’ll be reporting more as the answers emerge. The answers may still not be so cut and dried.

Albert had earlier explained, “There were a lot of HUD regulations at that time that permitted us to do things with our project that no other project in the country could. The intent was that it would be a home for the Jewish residents.” And, with the Jewish Community Center building, he said the Federation leased them the land for 50 years.

He concluded, “To the best of my knowledge, there is no question of Shalom House closing,” he said, but “with so few Jewish families there,” there remains the question of further planning for the Jewish community.

Senior Services

Anxiety about the future of Shalom House might have been fueled by the sudden closure two years ago of Jewish Family Services.

Sec. 202 properties are required to connect residents with outside services, such as health care, transportation, education and social activities. Although Shalom House does not provide assisted living services, the facility does have a service coordinator.

For many years JFS provided its service coordinator for Shalom House residents. But the service agency had a financial crisis when key federal grants ended, which some say had also overextended their mission beyond the Jewish community, and was forced to shut their doors overnight.

Weinreb stated that Jewish Family Service’s involvement was always separate from Shalom House. When the agency closed down, she said, HUD itself was able to fund a service coordinator at the residence.

In the wake of the JFS closing, the Jewish Care Program was created and is staffed in half-time positions by social workers, Director Erin Tarica and Hannah Arlette, who oversees the needs of the Holocaust survivors here.
As Paula Amar Schwartz, a former JFS board president who was involved in the establishment of the new program pointed out, the Jewish Care Program still needs to be expanded to really meet the needs of the Jewish community here.

Jewish Community’s Future Needs

In a separate conversation, a JCHC board member conversely doesn’t see that Jewish Albuquerque has a long-term problem, and said most Jewish retirees here have had professional careers and are well off.

“What are the real needs of the Jewish community?” she replied in response to that question, “[It’s] the ability to get to synagogue, to get to services on Saturday morning. It’s transportation. The city has some transportation you can call in, for doctor’s appointments [. . .] I don’t feel there is a need for a Jewish Home for the Aged, that there is enough assisted housing in Albuquerque.”

But limited long-term care options for the rapidly aging U.S. population—with the vulnerable 85-plus population being the fastest growing age demographic—is raising concern nationally.

Others believe the lack of affordable options leaves a vacuum for many members of the Jewish community in Albuquerque.

Longevity Gene

Certain Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews have been shown to be especially long-lived. (Several family members of this writer, for instance, have lived beyond 100.)  While research has long shown that in the general population about half of those living past age 85 develop some form of dementia, along with numerous chronic diseases, the Einstein Aging Study has shown that the longevity gene carried by Ashkenazi descendants carries with it additional protection from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and a study they published in 1996 also showed a causal relationship with preservation of cognitive function, especially with good cholesterol (with high HDL, the ‘good’ one) and avoidance of metabolic syndrome.

However, conditions such as strokes, combined with falls, may debilitate seniors long before they reach 100–and long after the money runs out.

Private alternatives in Albuquerque can be very expensive. For example, La Vida Llena, a deluxe senior community offering four residential tiers from independent through assisted living to nursing care, requires a large initial down payment that guarantees permanent residence, plus a substantial monthly fee.

That’s well beyond the reach of those who might be living on fixed incomes, such as the many artists and writers who were drawn to New Mexico and whose careers provided few pensions or opportunities to save for retirement.

This writer, pondering her own fate, asked the JCHC board member what she should plan to do when she reaches into her 90s. Perhaps reflecting the frustrations of those who have been dealing with these issues for many years without seeing any public policies put in place that would offer solutions, the board member tartly—and somewhat ambiguously—replied, “By then, there’ll be a pill for that.”

This article was written with support from the Journalists in Aging Fellowships, a program of New America Media and the Gerontological Society of America, sponsored by the Retirement Research Foundation. In a series of upcoming profiles, long-time Jewish New Mexicans will talk about the spiritual benefits and practical challenges of aging here. Read and comment here. In February, view at the newly redesigned www.NMJewisheLink.com

 

I was headed to a restaurant in search of a strong cup of Greek coffee, the kind with grounds you can rub your tongue against. I was stumped over the increasingly vehement feelings expressed by a friend of mine, and her insistence on finger pointing about the faults of others, namely the Palestinians.

While I had expressed frustration over not being able to find an unbiased news report on the recent terrifying stabbings by Muslims of Jews in Israel and the West Bank, she responded with a diatribe against all Palestinians. Since she is talking about moving to a Jewish settlement in the West Bank soon, I suppose I should not be surprised that she was consumed by an emotional fury and religious zealotry. When I suggested that her invective wasn’t going to win friends and influence people, she responded, “It is not my intention to win friends and influence people.” That shocked me.

The current violence seemed to have begun around a rumor that comes up periodically and that particularly angers religious Muslims, claims that the Israeli government is going to change the status quo at what Jews recognize as the Temple Mount, and Muslims the Noble Sanctuary. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has categorically stated there will not be any change. Settlements are not the trigger of the latest violence, but, they are problematic.

In 1977 I was just out of college, and in Boston sitting in the cramped office of Leonard Fein, who had just started the new magazine, Moment, for American Jews. I suggested I could do a photo essay for him in Israel.

He asked, “On what?”
Put on the spot, I replied, “One of the new settlements.” I was recalling an image from photographer Archie Lieberman’s earlier book, The Israelis, of a farmer with a sheep—and was thinking maybe I could find a fresh take on it with these new farmers there, well, if they had sheep. My suggestion was rebuffed.

Fein said, without elaborating further, ‘The settlements are problematic, aren’t they?’

It’s taken me a long time to understand what he understood very well then.

So now, in response to my friend saying it was not her intention to win friends and influence people, I replied, in astonishment, “Isn’t that what we’re here to do, to learn to live together on this planet?”

When I drive, the letters and numbers of license plates suggest ideas to me. Nothing spoke to me as I drove across town. But when I pulled up to the Greek coffee shop and parked behind another vehicle, there it was, staring me in the face, written in enigmatic shorthand, but I couldn’t decipher the hieroglyphic. I’d pulled into a space behind a car with a license plate that read “MKB 911.” I laughed, inwardly.

It was an older model unwashed car, with bird crud on the window. I took a peek at the young man sitting behind the wheel texting intently into his cell phone, and decided it was unlikely the owner had sprung for this license plate.

It spoke to me, though, loudly, MKB suggesting the merkabah, and 911 the destruction of 9/11, but what exactly did that mean? I now felt called to perform an exegesis on a license plate.

The merkabah refers to a vision beheld by Ezekiel who was one of the prophets in the Bible. He describes seeing a chariot pulled by four angels who each had four faces—of a man, a lion, an eagle and an ox—and four wings and alongside, wheels within wheels. Upon seeing the merkabah, Ezekiel heard the voice of God directing him to become a prophet to the Israelites.

Since then the Book of Ezekiel, and the merkabah, have been associated, but not always, with apocalyptic thinking. If one accepts that prosaic interpretation of the vision, then the message here was that this was an emergency vehicle, a warning of a big disaster coming, and that you need to be safe inside a spiritual space. In Sedona there is a New Age group of followers that meditate on picturing themselves encapsulated in star-tetrahedron-shaped personal merkabahs.

However, I am more inclined to think that it is precisely the religious zealots, those who lay biblical claim to Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, who would kill to claim holy ground, who could cause the destruction of Israel.

What this iconography said to me, rather, was a message, a formula, really, to avert that disaster—that instead, by staying in line with the spirit of God, when the four angels, representing the four elements, earth, air, fire and water, which in nature are separate, are harnessed and directed and balanced by spiritual power, they work together to create this amazing physical universe, with the infinitude of energies of the wheels within wheels that empowered the merkabah.

When disparate elements can work together for a greater good, that is the place where safety is to be found, for the planet to avert that apocalyptic insanity.

As Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

##
Column published Gallup Independent Spiritual Perspectives 10/31/15, revised and expanded, published www.NMJewisheLink.com 11/17/15 w graphic, posted website www.dianejoyschmidt.com 12.13.15 with Light being sends greetings Photo © 2015 Diane Joy Schmidt.

I found myself driving around aimlessly in Albuquerque yesterday asking, “What should I do with my life.” I’ve been after that question a lot lately, so finally I also asked the universe to give me a clue — I figured that couldn’t hurt — and then, while it took a few twists and turns, I actually got an answer.

It started when I was in a parking lot when a woman on crutches approached from between the cars, and then I saw she was one-legged.  With just the right amount of anguished tearfulness, she said, “I’m not a drunk and I’m not on drugs, the homeless shelter is full, and I’m just trying to get enough for a room,” and her appeal moved me to give her some money. Whatever her story, it is just possible to end up on the streets these days.

That opened my heart up to the suffering around me. And it caused a fundamental shift in my question. Now it was “What can I do to make the world a better place?” Anyway, it was about noon, I was getting hungry and I went into the Whole Foods grocery store near the intersection of Wyoming Boulevard at Academy Road. I took a sandwich into the dining area when something fabulous on the walls caught my eye. It was a show of children’s art, and it was really good. It was beautiful. That innocent joy and energy of children’s art is just a pleasure to look at.

Picasso was onto something when he told people to appreciate children’s art. The works, about 30 pieces, were colorful and creative and free, and then I noticed some of them had unusual captions, that I would later learn from their teacher was completely of their own writing: “Nature’s Beauty,” “Love the World, Take Care of the Earth,” “Respect All Kinds of Nature, Color is Everything, “ “Make Peace,” “Peace is your only Hope”, “Balance the World.” One that gave you a spinning feeling was titled “Happy World!”

Another, where you could see the teacher had helped a bit with the printing of a long message the child had composed, said “We appreciate how nature is beauty,” and had a tree with arm-like branches and pools of water gathering from streams that ran down from mountain peaks.

All the artwork had depth, layers of drawing, with markers and crayon and collage. And it seemed like one of the children had drawn themselves at the base of the world with sunrays coming out, or maybe the figure was an angel, or maybe it was both.

I had gotten so far away from that place of appreciation, that I hadn’t remembered anymore what art is for, and that appreciating beauty actually makes a difference. The pictures reached me, and they reminded me that beauty and harmony are indeed how the universe holds together — and that is both a scientific and a spiritual reality. And I had forgotten that making art, for children, is such a spontaneous thing to do. And that disharmony and ugliness appear when things aren’t working. I tend to get so caught up in focusing on what’s wrong in the world that I’d forgotten so many things that these children‘s artwork suddenly reminded me of.

I looked at the small sign below the work. This was artwork by the students of the Jewish Academy of Arts and Sciences (located next door to the Albuquerque Jewish Community Center) about tikkun olam, which is Hebrew for repairing or healing of the world. “The children, grades K-5, were asked to artistically represent how they could make the world a better place. These are their visual answers.”

 

I called the school and I got to talk to the teacher, Celeste Boals, Apparently the show had just been put up an hour before I sat down. Boals said she teaches all the grades at the school and that everyone’s piece got to be in the show.  She said that they had been working for the last month on this theme, tikkun olam, which is a core concept in Judaism — that the world is broken and we need to repair it, or as she says she likes to say, heal it.
“Since in Judaism we can’t depict images of God,” she said, “the children talked about how they can imply the presence of God, so some of the pictures have rays of light, and eyes in the sky, and angels. This idea of tikkun olam is where we are always looking at what’s wrong in the world and what needs to be fixed, but really we have to look in ourselves, in our hearts, what can each of us do in ourselves, in our lives, to effect positive change in the world.”

I told her that the exhibit was working. It was a first step for me, an answer, the first one I’d gotten to my prayer asking the universe show me what to do with my life. There it was — it gave me a little glimpse of what it means to make the world a better place.

By popular demand, following this article the show stayed up at the Whole Foods through November, 2014. Update: Despite its many years of success, due to falling admissions and lack of funding, the school closed its doors at the end of the school year in the spring of 2015.

2015 Award, Society of Professional Journalists, Rocky Mountain Region, Second-place for Columns: Personal, as published in the Gallup Independent. For newspapers >30,000 circ.

First-place Photography, among all circulation media, American Jewish Press Association Rockower Awards, 2015. As published, April, 2014 New Mexico Jewish Link.

In an eleventh-hour meeting at the Aaron David Bram Hillel House, a tidy white house on campus, a very small, tense but determined group of students convened to find volunteers amongst themselves who would speak the next night before the University of New Mexico Student Senate (ASUNM). With less than a week’s notice, Sarah Abonyi, president of the recently formed student campus organization Lobos for Israel, had learned that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) were bringing a resolution to the UNM campus on April 2 to ask the student senate to vote to divest in multi-national corporations that contribute to human rights violations against Palestinians.
Six students agreed they would speak. Hillel director Sarah Koplik commended the students for their willingness to stand up. During the course of the meeting they also learned that each side would each be allowed ten speakers who could each speak for three minutes. The standard strategy by SJP on campuses to slip in their resolution quietly without alerting any possible organized opposition had in this one instance failed.
The UNM chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine group has been responsible for such activities as “Israel Apartheid Week,” which is taught in SJP national trainings. Their website states that in March “We hosted a day full of films, a teach-in with allies on Border Militarization, a Mock Checkpoint, and held a boycott SodaStream action!” Another event on April 7 was co-sponsored with the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice. SJP activities have contributed to creating an environment of hostility towards Jewish students.
As Rose Davenport, Hillel student president, would say the next night before the student senate, “The way this resolution reads this sends a clear message to me that I am not welcome at the University of New Mexico, a place I have called home for four years.” Hillel director Kopik has reported that UNM last year received the dubious distinction of having had more anti-Israel events than any other campus in the U.S.
The movement known as Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) is considered the “soft war” against Israel. As the BDS movement found traction through anti-Israel academic boycotts, the first SJP group was formed at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001 and was subsequently banned there the following year after disruptive activity. The movement started to grow but remained fragmented.
According to the Anti-Defamation League’s information bulletin on SJP, “SJP’s chapters, which have largely operated independently of each other, recently indicated that they plan to collaborate more closely.  To that end, representatives from more than 40 SJP chapters across the country attended the first national SJP conference from October 14-16, 2011. The conference, titled, “Students Confronting Apartheid,” was held at Columbia University in New York. A second national SJP conference took place at the University of Michigan in November 2012.
The article continued, “SJP’s “unification” efforts are a result of the influence and coordination of a national organization called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a group that promotes extreme anti-Israel views. In 2010, AMP decided to focus specifically on Palestinian advocacy on college campuses and targeted SJP for this effort.”
The ADL report continued, “SJP groups also plan anti-Israel events throughout the school year. These events often seek to draw attention to Israel’s alleged wrongdoings in a sensationalistic way. For example, several SJP groups have displayed props like mock “apartheid walls” and Israeli checkpoints on main areas of campus to demonize Israeli soldiers and attempt to demonstrate the travel difficulties Palestinians face in Israel and the territories. These events sometimes have the effect of intimidating or silencing Jewish students on campus.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center acknowledges, “College Campuses See Rising Anti-Semitic Sentiment” (SPLC Intelligence Report, Fall 2008), that “College campuses are particularly susceptible to anti-Semitism that originates in certain sectors of the far left.” Further, the report points out that ironically this opens the door to extremists on the right. “The Intelligence Report took an in-depth look at two different examples of modern-day anti-Semitism on college campuses (neither of which occurred in the classroom or was sanctioned in any way by university officials). In both cases, legitimate concerns about Israeli treatment of Palestinians found expression alongside anti-Jewish canards and Holocaust denial. During appearances on public university campuses in California, two Muslim clerics have espoused anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Sept. 11 and asserted that Jews control the media and other powerful institutions. Several hundred miles north, a discussion group seeking justice for Palestinians has morphed into a haven for white supremacists that’s brought a string of Holocaust deniers to speak at the University of Oregon.”
While to date SJP has not been very successful in passing their resolutions, they have succeeded in getting a fair amount of media attention. Resolutions have passed at Hampshire College (whose regents later disavowed knowledge of its intent) and at Berkeley, but have been defeated elsewhere.
One resolution that made headlines recently was passed in March at Loyola University Chicago, but was subsequently vetoed by their student senate president following a week of protests by Jewish students and a second vote. It had initially been introduced without notice and with no opportunity for pro-Israel students to respond to it.
As reported in the National Catholic Reporter by Paul DeCamp, Loyola University’s president said that the university would have completely ignored the resolution anyways.  He also was quoted as saying, “[. . .] we would not be interested in taking up this issue. It is one-sided, it is focused on one party in a complex international situation. It is felt as extremely unfair by our Jewish faculty, staff and students.”
Whether resolutions are passed or not, the issue is being brought to students’ attention on campus by pro-Palestinian groups, thereby forcing a small group of staunchly pro-Israeli students to react to these proposals.

PART TWO – A Tense and Contentious ASUNM meeting.

The Debate
The room on the top floor at the Student Union Building filled up quickly. Of the hundred and fifty or so spectators lining the walls around the room, about 75% appeared to be there to support the Palestinian resolution, drafted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SPJ), and co-signed by seven other UNM student organizations including Dreamers in Action and the Arabic Club. Brittany Arneson, a tall young woman with a bright turquoise streak of bangs across red hair dressed in a tight black dress and tights, called out to the audience, “Raise your hands if you are in favor” of the resolution. A forest of hands went up around the room, surrounding the small pro-Israel group.

Ten speakers on each side were each given 3 minutes to speak. The SJP students spoke first. Palestinian student Danya Mustafa, SJP co-chair, stated their group had been working hard for four years towards this moment, attending national conferences and drafting their resolution. Others from SJP who spoke included their faculty advisor Les Field, UNM Professor of Anthropology and director of the Peace Studies program, who introduced himself as a Jewish son of Hungarian Holocaust survivors who has been unfairly called an anti-Semite by The New Mexico Jewish Link. Additionally two of the SJP student members also identified themselves as Jewish.
Then students from Hillel and Lobos for Israel and other members of the Jewish community, including Executive Director of the Jewish Federation president Sam Sokolove, Rabbi Paul Citrin, and Robert Efroymson of the New Mexico-Israel Business Exchange, spoke from various angles against the resolution.
A lengthy debate ensued between the senators and with further questions to the speakers. However, when it became clear that the senate was not likely to pass the resolution, a new strategy was floated by SJP. A motion was made to amend the resolution to take out any specific mention targeting Israel and to pass an amended resolution that would still ask for transparency and responsible investing by the university.
Small groups broke up to strike the clauses about Israel from the resolution. It was a tense period where it seemed to spectators that it would be hard to reason out of why to reject such a resolution that sounded reasonable on its face. Finally when the senate reconvened, this amended resolution did not pass, over the strenuous objections of student senator Ayham Maadi, sponsor of the original resolution. In rejecting the amended resolution, another student senator pointed out it only contained strike-outs, and did not contain any additional clauses from the opposing group who might want to add clauses.
Finally, after an almost four-hour debate, marked by deliberate and well-modulated speeches, and an audience that was almost entirely well-behaved and respectful, except for a few brief passionate outbursts from some of the older adults on both sides of the aisle who were quickly hushed up, the original resolution was defeated at approximately 10 pm, with a final vote of 12 against, 7 for, with one abstention.
The student senate requested that a new resolution be presented at their next meeting that would be drafted by all groups present, that would be more representative of the student body, and that would address transparency by the university about all its investments.
After the final vote was tallied, Danya Mustafa of SJP repeated loudly, “This is just the beginning,” and in a challenging manner loudly said that she had their email and would be in contact immediately with the Lobos for Israel group. But in the ensuing week, she would refuse to speak directly to Sarah Abonyi in meetings, and would not meet with UNM administrators at all.
When the meeting broke up SJP supporters and pro-Israel students mingled and talked with one another. Hillel member Ezra Rubinsky, who has family members living in Israel, and senator Ayham Maadi talked at length, and as they parted, Rubinsky said, “You seem like a cool guy,” and they shook hands. It seemed a hopeful moment, that some real dialogue could take place, beyond positions.
As the room emptied out finally it was after 10:30 pm.  This reporter left alongside a group of Hillel students, one of the last groups to leave. As they approached the double doors to leave the building, a tall white-haired lady suddenly approached me who must have been waiting by the exit door. In a friendly manner she began in a normal tone by relating that she was at Washington University in St. Louis in the 1970’s, active in a divestment movement there against corporations that polluted. Her voice rose as she saw she had gotten the attention of the others who had turned to see what she was saying, and then her lips contorted as she suddenly spat, “You people make this (divestment) all about you.”
It was such a confoundingly irrational and frightening statement that I found I had no response except to walk on, but it served as a reminder that there is a long road ahead and that it will take new generations for the scars to fade that have for some turned into only bitterness and hatred.
New Mexico Jewish Link Editor’s Note and Update April 30:
On April 26, a resolution against Israeli companies passed through the Graduate and Professional Student Association’s Council (GPSA). It is very similar to the resolution that SJP tried to pass through the undergraduate ASUNM Senate. This resolution may be discussed at the next UNM Boad of Regent’s meeting on Friday, May 9 at 10:00 am.
On April 30, a new resolution authored by undergraduate Senator Earl Shank to encourage socially responsible investments was unanimously approved by the ASUNM student senate. This resolution did not castigate Israel or Israeli companies, and was a rare occasion where Students for Justice in Palestine worked hand-in-hand with Lobos for Israel. This is particularly unusual, as frequently, SJP chapters will lose funding if they coordinate activities with Zionist groups.
UPDATE: On May 10 after a five-hour meeting the GPSA voted to rescind the SJP resolution that had previously been passed on April 26. Because there had been no notification on the agenda and the SJP had claimed there was no opposition, the Hillel and Lobos for Israel students were allowed to address the GPSA.  The final vote was tied ten to ten, and was broken by the chair in favor of rescinding the resolution. It is expected that SJP will appeal this vote and continue to press their resolutions and activities on campus. A full report on that meeting wil be posted soon. Read post at  UNM’s Graduate Student Association votes to rescind anti-Israel resolution.

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This article and photos by Diane J. Schmidt appeared as a special report for the New Mexico Jewish Link, front page, May, 2014. First-place, Photos, American Jewish Press Association Rockower Awards, 2015,  all circ.

 

 

“Healing the Wounds of History, The Long Walk and the Holocaust” received First-place for Reporting: Education Reporting, Society of Professional Journalists Top of the Rockies, 2015 as published in the Gallup Independent newspaper Oct. 25, 2014, and third-place for Specialty Articles: History in the New Mexico Press Women Communications contest, as published in the New Mexico Jewish Link, November 2014.

“Healing the Wounds of History, The Long Walk and the Holocaust.” By Diane J. Schmidt  

The Third Navajo/Jewish Dialogue, “Healing the Wounds of History, The Long Walk and the Holocaust.” took place on October 12 in Albuquerque between Navajo educator Frank Morgan and Rabbi Harry Rosenfeld at Congregation Albert, an event organized by Gordon Bronitsky.

Finding myself in the odd position of being assigned by the newspaper to cover a talk that my partner Frank Morgan would be giving, I watched him preparing to navigate the treacherous shoals of cross-cultural language and dialectics to communicate the essence of the Navajo perspective of resilience and balance, in order to explain indirectly the survival of the Navajo people and culture after centuries of shocks and of insults from Northern European immigrants.

When I first heard what the selected topic would be, The Long Walk and the Holocaust, I thought it unwise. I frankly I didn’t expect my fellow Jewish congregants to be receptive to hearing about the suffering the Navajo people had endured by comparison with their own.

My concerns dissolved entirely when Frank told me what he had chosen to talk about, he said it would be “the Navajo perspective on healing, rebalancing, rather than focusing so much on the process of damage and destruction, the endemic problems of what trauma does to the psychological self.” His framework, the Navajo perspective on healing, suddenly shifted the entire conversation, and I understood that his emphasis on healing comes out of his years of teaching about the Blessing Way teachings that reverse the effects of trauma.

That sunny Sunday afternoon some fifty people gathered in the synagogue’s sanctuary. There were Navajos, Jews, Christians, children of mixed marriages, and children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of survivors of the Long Walk and of the Holocaust.

After Frank’s presentation, then Rabbi Rosenfeld went on to talk about some of the reasons why the Jewish people’s healing from the wounds of the Holocaust has been a slow process, and then they both addressed what it means to go forward from that place.

The audience remained attentive through two hours – twice as long as was originally planned, and many stayed plying Frank with questions afterwards.

Healing traditions beginning from the Creation Stories

Frank Morgan’s presentation began as an acknowledgement that there have been wounds dating back even before human history, as told in the Creation Stories, when everything began to be formed into what it is today, and how there were frequent conflicts among the Holy People. “Adultery was the most severe of these,” he said, “and caused a separation of female and male entities. In order to have life, the Holy People had to get back together and heal to make everything better, more harmonious.” He explained that to do this “They created different healing methods. Today we know them as Chantways, such as the Night Way. Some of them have become extinct.”

In a direct way, Frank was able to convey the most basic of Navajo fundamental principles. He said, “When they were creating these harmonious conditions, they found two ways that everything moves, one that is consistent with the journey of the sun and then the reverse, going the other way. To reestablish everything so that it goes in the sun-wise direction, shábik’ehgo, according to the journey of the sun, is a way to create harmony because all that is good and beneficial moves in this positive direction.

He continued, “We rely on relationships in the universe, how things relate to each other, where things are compatible with each other, hózhó. All relationships are based upon principles that maintain order and natural growth and development of all that exists.” So in this way, he explained the Navajo foundations of the restoration of wholeness, grounded in the natural world.

Then shift happened.

Frank sketched the events leading up to the Long Walk in 1864, and the effects of those events. “The Mexicans were okay, we got along. But then came the American settlers, we couldn’t establish relations with them because they brought soldiers, weapons and war, and they wanted everything. They used biological warfare, like smallpox. Then, there was scorched earth. They sent the ‘esteemed’ Kit Carson, a small man, a trapper, to invade and force The People out to Fort Wingate, which is a place known as Bear Springs in Navajo, and from there the army marched them by gunpoint over 300 miles to Bosque Redondo at Fort Sumner, southeast of Santa Rosa, near Clovis, NM.”

“We had established our whole being, our life on our homeland and when we were removed from that land, that was a huge, huge wound. In Navajo practices, we take a child’s umbilical cord, where they want their child or grandchild to be psychologically oriented, and place it in the ground. The particular place where a child’s umbilical cord is placed, that is the entire environment where the mind, thought, and psyche are embedded or imprinted. If you remove the person, you’re breaking that umbilical cord like it’s still in the womb. People who were later were removed off their land to make room for coalmines for example, but their whole life diminished.

“The Earth is my mother, my umbilical cord is in the earth, feeling us, like we’re feeling we’re still in the womb. We still feel we’re in the womb of earth. Sky and earth relate in harmony.”

A collective sigh rose up from the audience hearing Frank talk about what it was to be like to uprooted from their land. It brought out the poignancy of what it means to be uprooted from one’s land.

And it acknowledged the trauma of the long history of my people, the Jewish people, our diaspora of being forced to move from place to place across the earth, and shed light on why perhaps I have always felt a sense of impermanence, a faint undercurrent of alienation that never leaves me except when I am in nature. And since I had never fully known what it was to be nurtured by a place, the way he spoke about being mothered by the earth, I felt almost envy in hearing of his loss, an envy that I might have been covering over for years with the superficial annoyed impatience of an urbanite.

He went on with a clear voice, “We were exiled, alienated, just so they could take that land to be settled by immigrants from the East. We were marched and many died along the way, to the Pecos river, which was salty water, and told to grow crops, but the insects there destroyed the crops, many got sick, many died.” Finally after four years the government acknowledged it was a failed experiment and allowed the Navajo people to return to their homeland, and they walked back.

Recognizing the wounds as the first step towards healing

“Today, we are walking with our wounds. Much as an injured person or animal that moves or limps in pain. This is how we are right now, they say. So this wound, in the Navajo perspective, affects us in a certain way. Its effect is subtle and unseen and we are not aware that we feel hopeless or that we don’t have the strength to get up. It is like a cliff that does not allow us to go forward. That’s the way it is.”

“How do we go to the next place, where things are better? We cannot remain where we were harmed. It affects the mind. The mind gets all distraught and disordered. There’s internal confusion, shock, your thinking has been impacted. Here you don’t feel good about yourself, you are angry, and even suicidal. The effects of this wounding are inside people.”

Prescriptions for healing a nation, and challenges to be faced

When Frank met with the rabbi at his office two days before the dialogue the question came up around how does a entire people heal? Frank said, “It has been shown that trauma can affect people as a whole group, as a whole nation. It has to be reversed.

“Therapy is available to reverse the negative effects. Relationships are re-established and re-connected to their normal state. Everything in life is able to work toward harmony and balance. The essence of kinship repairs our relations.

“To rebalance and reestablish k’é relations, begin by understanding how a problem affects the k’é relationship and by taking responsibility for your part in that problem. Most important, without blaming the other; talk over how this is not the way it should be, and talk about the ways that you have practiced k’é before and how good it was and express your desire to return to that kinship. You may determine what exchange you will give each other to satisfy the mind.

“This is similar to reparations after a war. You don’t have to say “I forgive you’ or ‘you are forgiven’ because that’s already done when you took responsibility and owned up to what you did and that has the effect of asking for forgiveness.”

As to whether the wounds of history will ever be properly addressed for the Navajo is not known. He pointed out that the treaties that were signed were not favorable for them. “We ended up with limited resources, and a system of three branch government that we don’t know to make work (a member of the audience called out, “We don’t either!” and everyone laughed).

“Who’s going to do this for us, re-establish k’é and find a better life for the People? Our leaders have to lead us there.” To move forward and have a better life is an enormous challenge that will take a long time but we have to reach for it.”

Frank Morgan and Rabbi Harry Rosenfeld

Then Rabbi Rosenfeld spoke about how reluctant the Jewish people have been to move on from the Holocaust, it’s not something you get over. Also, he pointed out, today we are living much longer lives. In Babylonian times, a lifespan was 40 years, and history might be remembered by seeing a sculpted stone carving. Today we are living twice as long, and the TV history channel is a constant reminder of what happened during World War II.

But, Rabbi Rosenfeld said, that we must carry on as Jews and maintain our Jewish identity to show that Hitler couldn’t destroy us, doesn’t resonate anymore with a younger generation, who want positives to embrace for maintaining a Jewish identity. He said this is a major challenge facing the Jewish people going forward.

Again, I thought about the terrifying stories I had unearthed recently about what had happened to my relatives still living in Poland when the Germans came in 1939, the women and girls were forced to strip naked and, beaten with whips, dance in a circle inside the synagogue, while outside, the men had to crawl on the cobblestones in piggyback races carrying heavier men while the Poles laughed, before they were taken away in the trains.

I think it was wise that I was shielded from the knowledge of this insanity when I was younger, I’m not sure what good it does to know about it now, when I am haunted by these images, but as Jewish people we say we will never forget, so that it does not happen again.

I try to learn from Frank’s words, and while I often think the Navajo might learn something from the Jews about maintaining one’s culture through the written word, I think more, that the Jews could learn something from the Navajo, for who it is a custom and an admonition not to speak so much of the dead and the wounds of the past.

I ask Frank if what I wrote about my relatives, if going back over historical trauma, was okay from the Navajo perspective, and Frank replied, “Begin with a positive story. What the older people say, what they tell us that we need to know, are the stories from the time of when the first Hogan was made.”

That sounds like a whole other story I will have to wait for him to tell.

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“Healing the Wounds of History, The Long Walk and the Holocaust” received first-place for Education Reporting, Society of Professional Journalists Top of the Rockies, 2015 as published in the Gallup Independent newspaper Oct. 25, 2014.

 

 

Getting to Know Federation Director Zach Benjamin
Story and photos by Diane Joy Schmidt
Published October 27, 2015 at the New Mexico Jewish eLink

Getting up close and personal, a little, with Zach Benjamin, as he presented himself to about 60 people at the Congregation Albert Brotherhood Sunday breakfast on October 19, Zach, age 32, came across as personable, thoughtful, and able – as yet unscarred by the challenges of leading the Jewish Federation of New Mexico.

He is eager to get things right and to get a message out there that reaches the Jewish community and the larger community. So far, he’s doing well. He presented fresh ideas about rebranding the Federation to the community – heck, just hearing the words rebranding and Federation in the same sentence sounded fresh.
Best of all, he brought his young wife, Taina, also 32, who was in fact his high school sweetheart, to meet the folks, that is, the brotherhood breakfast group.

Zach explained that he was born in Chicago into a Reform Jewish household, moved to Los Angeles and then to Florida, and then back to Chicago to go to Northwestern. After attending graduate school in New York, he returned to Chicago to begin his career working for large trade organizations.

He explained that “Judaism was always central to my identity, but it was only when Taina got serious about converting to Judaism that I began to realize that my calling was to serve Judaism – both professionally and personally.” Zach said that he began commuting from Chicago to Tampa once a month “to attend minyan with my now-wife, who at the time lived there with her family.”
He started making annual trips to Israel, and to think about how his extensive background in nonprofit work could be put to good use in a meaningful way in the Jewish community.  And voilà, here he is. He thanked the community for giving them such an overwhelmingly warm welcome, and says he now has about twelve Jewish mothers here, and can assure his actual mother he is getting enough to eat.

I didn’t give Zach the third-degree about his mastery of Hebrew – we’ll give him a few years.  Taina has a degree in math, worked for the Chicago Architecture Foundation, and looks forward to working here and earning an advanced degree. And, Zach in his introduction mentioned that she has just joined Hadassah as a life-member.

Zach has a conciliatory manner but is no pushover. His position is clearly defined regarding the Federation’s position here on Israel. The Federation “will not give safe harbor to the BDS movement,” meaning Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, which is “both anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.” He has no problem with J Street, while acknowledging there are the occasional “little land-mines” that can turn up.

He’s met quite a bit with Rabbi Brin of Nahalat Shalom, and at the breakfast announced a joint Federation-Nahalat Shalom fund-raising campaign for Syrian refugees. He says yes, he’s old friends by now with Rabbi Rosenfeld, and that he has met a couple of times with Sam Sokolove.
Quoting JFNM Community Outreach Director Sara Koplik that we have to improve “how we tell our story,” he has been learning about Jewish communities throughout the state. He pointed to Taos and Los Alamos as examples of smaller communities which have well-defined Jewish life. He was also impressed by the concerns of the close-knit but shrinking Jewish communities in places like Roswell and Las Vegas, New Mexico, and how Federation can be a life-line for these outlying communities.

He stressed that he wants Federation to be a partner to the community, and “re-set the narrative” by actively engaging with the community and letting people know about the programs JFNM supports. Zach outlined a bit of the new campaign they will be rolling out at the first of the year. He talked about how Federation will be empowering AbqTribe – a Young Adult program first started at B’nai Israel, with professional development and mentoring support. Federation president Sabra Minkus added that JFNM supports the Jewish Care Program for seniors, which also includes special funding for the Holocaust survivors here.

Comments from the audience were primarily of the take-a-hint variety. Sisterhood member Evie Zlotkin was pleased to announce that the food bank is back up and running; another suggested Federation might want to play a role in the annual Maimouna women’s Seder; and a third asked why the Jewish community doesn’t do anything for disabled members of the community who are not seniors.
George Skadron asked rhetorically, “To what extent should Federation be a spokesperson to the outside community. Anita Miller, Anti-Defamation League board member, mentioned how terrific it was that Suki Halevi, ADL regional director is located within the office space of JFNM and is a great resource for them.

Harvey and Rachel Sternheim are recent arrivals from Los Angeles and Rachel’s mother Beverly White is a long-time involved member here, so Harvey introduced himself and asked if we have a genocide walk here like they do in LA, and also mentioned that in LA they regularly did a “Big Sunday” of community work out in the community. Pictured here are Beverly White, Zach and Taina Benjamin, Harvey and Rachel Sternheim, and Jenny Moran.

This reporter remarked that the Jewish community here recently lost its school, its printed newspaper, and the Jewish Family Service (JFS), and that now Rabbi Min Kantrowitz, who spearheaded so much outreach and chaplaincy work, has just retired, leaving a big vacuum. Zach responded that, while he’s not making any promises, there is talk of bringing back a quarterly printed New Mexico Jewish Link, to which the room broke out in spontaneous applause, and that they are looking at “how to replace the irreplaceable Rabbi Min.”

Meryl Manning Segel, a past president of the Federation and of Jewish Family Service and a busy realtor, added in an aside to this reporter afterwards that the reason Jewish Family Service closed was, in her view, because they were overextended – they were doing too much. They got federal grants to do programs, she explained, but because these were federal grants they couldn’t just be for the Jewish community, and that as these grants dried up, the board would not cut the programs, which, she said, was irresponsible. Now, she said, the Jewish Care Program is focused on the Jewish community. However, she agreed that Rabbi Kantrowitz’s retirement is leaving a big vacuum, and said that she practically cried at the announcement.

Rabbi Kantrowitz, who since JFS closed in January 2013 was left with only a 5-hour-a-week paid position, said in a separate interview that, when JFS, and her position with them as rabbi to the Jewish community at large were funded, she used to visit many homebound elderly Jewish people throughout the state, and that they are not being served now.

Our new New Mexico Jewish Federation Executive Director Zach Benjamin concluded by stressing that he wants the Federation to be a big tent, and by saying that his door is open, that people should come and see him, and that he wants to hear from the community. Everyone clapped loudly and long.