Local rabbis join effort to rain on China's parade
Tourists are urged to forego Olympics and send a message
Ron Campeas with , NJJN Staff Writer | 05.08.08

Sidebar Sitting it out?

Rabbis spanning Judaism's religious movements want to send an Olympic-sized message to China without harming the interests of athletes or Israel.

	Protesters of Olympics host China demonstrate as the Olympic torch passes through San Francisco on April 9. Photo courtesy Elizabeth Friedman Branoff/American Jewish World Service

In an appeal issued April 30, 185 Jewish leaders — mostly clergy — appealed to Jews not to attend the Beijing Olympics this summer as tourists.

Their petition charged that China is the principal power propping up the regime in Sudan, where government-allied militias have murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians in the civil war in the Darfur region. It is also cracking down harshly on independence movements in Tibet.

"We remember all too well that the road to Nazi genocide began in the 1930s, with Hitler's efforts to improve the public image of his evil regime. Jews should not be party to the whitewashing of such a regime," according to their statement.

Among the signatories were several local rabbis, including Douglas Sagal of Temple Emanu-El in Westfield and Amy Small of Congregation Beth Hatikvah in Summit. Also signing was Nancy Hersh, cochair of the Reconstructionist Educators of North America and education director at Congregation Beth Hatikvah.

"As Jews, we have the obligation to stand up for those who are oppressed," said Sagal. "We just came through Passover, a holiday whose theme is speaking out against oppression. If we as Jews have lost our ability to speak out against oppression, who will?"

And yet the petition immediately lay open fault lines within the Jewish community. The Anti-Defamation League rejected the boycott call and said comparisons the clergy statement made to the 1936 Berlin Olympics were inappropriate.

Despite the support of individual Orthodox rabbis, the Orthodox Union and Agudath Israel — the two largest Orthodox organizations in the United States — along with the National Council of Young Israel, also rejected the call for a boycott on tactical grounds. The OU's statement said that exceptional care ought to be taken, "lest we cause more harm than good."

Small pointed out that the issue is complicated, and that her congregation has been wrestling with how to speak up.

"People are conflicted. They are not sure first what is effective and second what does the least harm. People don't want the athletes harmed. They've worked hard. And people don't want the people in China to be harmed," she said.

Small also has some sympathy with the idea that "we should not rush to act but to act thoughtfully," she said. Still, she signed the letter.

"It's irresponsible to stand idly by while our brother's blood is spilled," she said. She is continuing to read up on the issue and decide what actions will make sense going forward.

Jewish groups have played a disproportionate and lead role in drawing Western attention to the Darfur killings. Yet deciding whether to confront China, which enjoys thriving trade with Israel, presents a more complicated set of issues than attempting to isolate Sudan, a poor country that does not want relations with the Jewish state.

Also complicating matters is that the United States and Israel have recently scored modest successes in getting China to join the effort to isolate Iran until it ends its suspected nuclear weapons program.

Organizers of the boycott statement said it confronts the Chinese over human rights abuses while not harming athletes and national interests.

"There's a difference between doing business, which is a necessity, and spending discretionary income on sports, which gives a country legitimacy that's doing a number of very bad things that Jews should be sensitive to," said Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the head of Manhattan's Kehilath Jeshurun synagogue, who was a coordinator of the statement.

Lookstein and another Orthodox organizer of the petition, Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg, the former chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, saw an opportunity when they learned that China was preparing a kosher kitchen for the Olympics. The outreach to Jewish religious needs struck a chord.

"Jews should not be party to the whitewashing of such a regime, kosher kitchen or no kosher kitchen," reads the statement. "Regimes that practice or enable oppression, terrorism, or genocide are not kosher."

Sagal agreed that the kosher kitchen should not subvert opposition to China's human rights abuses.

"A kosher kitchen does not make for kosher behavior. I think the behavior of the Beijing government, in terms of repressive politics, should not be ignored because they have a kosher kitchen," he said.

Shades of Berlin?

The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which took part in preparing the statement, noted that Germany used the 1936 Olympics to help create the false impression of secure Jewish communities and thereby diminish American awareness of the impending Nazi threat.

"Having endured the bitter experience of abandonment by our presumed allies during the Holocaust, we feel a particular obligation to speak out against injustice and persecution today," the statement said.

The ADL statement rejected such parallels.

"We believe that these comparisons are inappropriate," its statement said. "China is a complicated society that is changing and opening up in many ways, and one simply cannot equate the Beijing Olympics with those games in Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust."

Etzion Neuer, ADL's New Jersey regional director, said the ADL is historically wary of boycotts.

"The Jewish community has been subject to boycotts," he said. "Therefore, every case is looked at independently. In this particular case, we don't think a boycott will produce tangible results and is therefore counterproductive."

Still, he said, "we are not excusing China's abysmal human rights record and we condemn its actions in Sudan and Tibet."

Another signatory to the boycott petition, Rabbi Eric Yoffie of Westfield, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said the rabbis' statement is "an appeal to individuals, not an appeal to the government of Israel."

Yoffie noted that Israel is a small nation that has had to balance geopolitical realities with compelling moral matters.

"This is a moral appeal to Jewish individuals around the world," he said.

Greenberg said individuals were less susceptible to the pressures of maintaining alliances and promoting trade.

"There are counterforces for countries and organizations, but not for laypeople," he said.

Organizers said they also did not want to harm athletes. The wholesale U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics is now considered a failure that hampered athletic careers more than it moved the Soviet Union to change its Afghanistan policies.

Appealing to rabbis to sign as individuals circumvented the difficult questions that would arise if Jewish organizations were involved. The organizers did not approach Jewish groups, although they hoped that some would sign on, as did the American Jewish Congress.

Greenberg and Lookstein lined up other Orthodox notables to sign on, including Rabbi Norman Lamm, the chancellor of Yeshiva University; Rabbi Dov Linzer, the dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, a rabbinical school in New York City; and David Bernstein, the dean of the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies in Israel.

They were joined by the leaders of the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements, as well as dozens of rabbis across the United States and Canada.

Rabbi Joel Meyers, the executive vice president of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly, said he hoped the call would resonate beyond Jewish tourists but doubted it would.

Ron Kampeas is a writer for JTA.

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Sitting it out?

	Rabbi Amy Small was among those who signed the petition

In contrast to a petition signed by 185 Jewish leaders, some Jewish organizations have urged action by the U.S. government.

Last month at least three groups — the Reform movement; the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an advocacy umbrella organization bringing together national groups and local communities; and the American Jewish World Service, the lead Jewish group in the efforts to stop the violence in Darfur — called on President Bush to boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympics, a high-profile step they say would not harm athletes.

The White House says he plans to attend, although they emphatically do not rule out a change of heart.

Hadar Susskind, the JCPA's Washington director, welcomed the rabbis' statement but wondered about its effectiveness.

"I don't know how useful that is as a real lever to get China to change its practices," he said.

Local stories posted courtesy of the New Jersey Jewish News