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SERVING NEBRASKA AND IOWA SINCE 1920
IS SIvan, 5747 Friday, June 12, 1M7
Vol. LXIV No. 37 OmÂŤtM, NMK.
Intermarriage conflict ruptures Wisconsin Council of Rabbis MILWAUKEE (JTA) - The future of the Wisconsin Council of Rabbis is unclear as a result of a May 19 vote to reconsider its longstanding policy of barring membership to rabbis who officiate at mixed marriages, The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle reported. Five Conservative and two Orthodox rabbis resigned immediately after the vote, including council president Rabbi Isaac Lerer (Conservative). They explained that while the policy was not changed, the defeat of their motion to reaffirm it was sufficient reason to leave. Other local Orthodox rabbis either left the council over previous disputes or had never joined. The incident pitted Reform rabbis who perform mixed marriages or support the right of their colleagues to do so against Conservative and Orthodox rabbis opposed to intermarriage. It also triggered debate over the nature of the council. "If our colleagues are going to officiate at intermarriages, then there is no place for us in. the council," Lerer said. The vote to reconsider the policy was 97. A counter-proposal to reaffirm it was defeated by the same vote. Eighteen members were present, but one, Rabbi Dena Feingold of Congregation Beth Hillel (Re-
form) of Kenosha. who raised the issue at the meeting after officiating at an intermarriage, did not vote. There were two abstentions. Members of the Ck>uncil and four of the rabbis who resigned met again on May 26 to discuss the issue. "Everyone wants a resolution of this thing. We are looking for a way to resolve it," said Rabbi Terry Bookman, assistant rabbi at Congregation Sinai (Reform). According to Leon Cohen, writing in The Chronicle, Orthodox Rabbis Bernard Reichman and Tsvi Schur appeared willing to find a compromise while Conservative Rabbi Louis Swichkow and Lerer demurred. Lerer was quoted as saying he "cannot sit on a council which would undermine the rabbinate."
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Mr. Hill has served as a consultant for the United JewiAh Appeal specializing in.training seminars. He was part of last year's UJA Kadimah mission to the Soviet Union and has just returned from the '88 Kadimah mission to Morocco, Yugoslavia, Austria, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria and Israel. His presentation at the annual meeting will deal with his impressions of his most recent UJA mission.
Synagogues elect officers Temple Israel Temple Israel has elected Murray H. Newman as president, and other officers are as follows: Mel Epstein, Jim Farber, Joim Bernstein, vice presidents; Jane Rips, secretary; Ajon Farber, treasurer; Martin J. Lehr, past David Friedlond and Don Greenberg are trustees who will be members of the executive board. Other trustees are: Ronald Brodkey, Jane Brooks, Steven Dloogoff, Randi Epstein, Joe Erman, Tom Fellman, Scott Friedman, Dora Goldstrom, Robert Hurwitz, Susie Kaplan, Dr. Stanley Malashock, Dr. Larry Roffman, Norman D. Hoffman, Rosalie Saltzman, Jeffrey Smedlund, Donald Yale, and Hermene Zweiback.
Israeli children show tennis skills Children from the Israeli Tennis Centers will be in Omaha Sunday to conduct an exhibition and meet with tennis enthusiasts. According to Marlene and Elliott Hechtman, hosts, the group will exhibit tennis skills at the Westroads Club, 1212 North 102nd Street at 6 p.m. Israel Tennis Centers were created to give an entire generation of Israeli youngsters a healthy outlet and add greater normality to their pressured lives, the Hechtmans explained. "For them, tennis is more than a game—it is the experience of a lifetime," they added. Information on the program and related activities can be obtained by calling the Hechtmana at 392-0468.
Nachama Schiller, 8, left, and her sister Rivka, 11, view a Holocaiut monument defaced by spraypaint-wielding vandals a day after it was unvejled near Skokie, 111., village hall on June 1. At first workers prepared to clean the grafitti off but at the request of residents of the village, the paint will be left on the statae pending the outcome of a dty council meeting. See related story on page 12.
Conservative Rabbi Gideon Goldenholz told The Chronicle that he opposed intermarriage and would never officiate at one, but had voted nevertheless to reconsider the policy to enable the council to broaden its membership. "As far as I am concerned, the purpose of the council is not to scrutinize the activities of its members" or to be "a legislative body" that makes halachic rulings, he said.
Gary Hill to speak in Lincoln Gary Hill wiU be the guest speaker at the li''"''ff'p Jenish Welfare Federation's annual dinner meeting June 14, 6 p.m., at the University Club in Lincoln. Mr. Hill is president of Contact Center, a private, non-profit, international, information referral clearing house. Contact Center deals with human services, illiteracy, criminal justice and runaway services. Mr, Hill is sdso chairman of the board of Northwestern Metal Company.
Jewish monument defaced
Beth Israel Beth Israel Synagogue has elected Manny Goldberg president for 1987-88. Other officers are: Richard Katzman, Gary Parilman, Roy Levine, vice presidents; Marvin Parilman, treasurer; Lois Endleman, recording secretary. The following were elected to a one-year term to serve on the Board of Commissioners: Sheldon Cohen, Bemice Crounse, Lois Endelman, Irving Epstein, Manny Goldberg, Richard Katzman, Dr. Barry Kricsfald, Roy Levine, Teddy Levine, Dr. Alan Morris, Gary Parilman, Marvin Parilman, Lee Polikov, Irwin Schwartz and Sidney Wertheim.
Sunclay breakfast A post Shavuot breakfast in honor of Dr. Velvl W. Greene, PhD, will take place for the Omaha Jewish community, Sunday at 10 a.m. in the Jewish Community Center. Sponsored by Chabad-Lubavitch of Mid America, the breakfast will feaDr. Greene ture a talk by Dr. Greene, director of the Sir Emanuel Jacobovitz Center at Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel. Dr. Greene vrill speak on Counting Down to the SO's, addressing issues in contemporary Judaism from a scientific viewpoint as well as from a Torah perspective. . Reservations for the breakfast are not needed, the announcement stated.
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Trueiustice requires memory, declares Wiesel at Barbie trial By Eklwin Eytan LYON (JTA) - Nobel Peace laureate Eli Wiesel told a packed courtroom here that the reason for the trial of Klaus Barbie is not simply to bring to justice a Nazi war criminal who had long evaded it, but to remind a forgetful world of the Holocaust. "This trial is important to remind us of what happened. Justice without memory is incomplete," the 58-year-old author and Auschwitz survivor declared from the witness stand. He said he came here, the scene of Barbie's crimes, "to stop the killer from killing twice. The killer kills twice. First, he kills his victim, then he tries to erase the traces. We must prevent this second death. This is why I am here. This is why this trial is so important." He spoke with the same quiet eloquence that raised his books to the statUre of classics in his own lifetime, the definitive documentaries of the Holocaust, the word he coined to apply to the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis. The court listened in rapt attention. The three magistrates and nine jurors seemed spellbound. Prosecutor Pierre Truche shut his thick Barbie file and leaned forward, intent not to miss a word. Only an occasional sob from the public gallery broke the silence of the hushed courtroom. The entire world knows Wiesel's history. " Plucked from a Hungarian village in 1944 and put aboard a sealed train to the Auschwitz death camp with his family, he alone lives to tell the tale. He told it here again, 43 years almost to the day after his deportation and three days before his son's 15th birthday, his own age at the time. Wiesel confessed that more than four decades after the tragedy he fails to understand its meaning. "I still cannot tmderstand how these people, the sons of the most educated and civilized nation in Europe at the time, could have produced these killers," he said. "I still fail to understand the members of the Sonderkommandos (the squads who carried out the tortures and murders) could have been doctors, lawyers, artists, music lovers who had killed by day and returned
to their homes in the evening to read poetry and listen to classical music." The Nazis were obsessed with killing Jews, Wiesel told the court. The deportation trains carrying the victims to death camps were given priority over military trains taking troops, arms and supplies to the Eastern front where the German army was then falling back under the Soviet counter-offensive. Wiesel spoke for 20 minutes, but his words encompassed years of horrors. "There are some things about which I cannot speak, like the death of my little sister, the suffering of my father, the death of my mother, lest I start weeping," he said. At that point, a lawyer present read part of his statement. Then Wiesel continued: "We arrived at Auschwitz in the afternoon. I remember it all, the barbed wires stretching to infinity, the screams of the welcoming committee, the shots fired by the SS, the barking of their dogs and the huge flames reaching up to high heaven as if to devour it. "I remember how in a little forest near Birkenau I saw the SS throw small, live children into the fire. In the city of Kiev, I saw a group of laughing German soldiers stop a mother and her two children. They took one of her children and killed it before her eyes. Then they took the second and killed it as well. She wanted to die, but the killers preferred her alive. I can see her today as she, then picked up the two small bodies, drew them close to her chest and started daiicing. How can I narrate such a scene? How can I understand the evil which hurts more than pain? "Maybe one of the worst things which hqipened was to see others suffer. For a son to see his father in pain, for a father to see his son tortured. All the victims are my brethren. We bear them love and admiration," Wiesel declared. He added; "All the victims were not Jewish, but all the Jews were the victims. For the first time m history an entire nation, from the oldest to the youngest, from the richest to the poorest, were sentenced to (Continued on Page 3)