SECURING RELIGIOUS RIGHTS FOR ISRAEL’S LIBERAL JEWS — On Sunday, the Reform and Conservative movements, with the pioneering efforts of Women of the Wall, won — after 25 years — a place for liberal Jews to pray at The Wall (see related stories on page 6 and 22). This praying area will not be under the auspices of the Israeli Chief Rabbi, and as such constitutes government recognition of Reform and Conservative Judaism in Israel for the first time.
Rabbi Mark Levin, founding rabbi of Congregation Beth Torah, says that while this a great moment, much remains to be done to secure religious rights for Israel’s liberal Jewish streams. He is conducting a fundraising campaign for the Israel Religious Action Center — the social justice arm of the Reform movement in Israel — to be given to Anat Hoffman, its director and a leader of Women of the Wall. A donor has already pledged $10,000 if Rabbi Levin can raise a matching $10,000. He currently has two gifts of $1,000 each.
He hopes to be able to send a check for $20,000 to Israel to support IRAC’s work and Hoffman. Those wishing to help, any amount is appreciated, should make the check payable to Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City and put in the memo that it’s for the Israel Religious Action Center matching grant. Mail checks to: Rabbi Mark H. Levin, Congregation Beth Torah, 6100 W. 127th St., Overland Park, KS 66209.
TV OF JEWISH INTEREST — On Monday, Feb. 15, KCPT will air “American Jerusalem: Jews and the Making of San Francisco.” It will air at 9 p.m. and “tells the remarkable story of the pioneering Jews of San Francisco. Drawn to California by the Gold Rush, Jews were welcomed in San Francisco as nowhere else and would go on to build a thriving community, the second largest Jewish community in the United States after New York. With their newfound freedom, Jews played a central role in the transformation of this once-sleepy maritime village into the largest metropolis in the American West. As Jews integrated into mainstream San Francisco society, they were forced to reinvent what it meant for them to be Jewish, to create in essence a new kind of Jew — San Francisco Jew.”
DUTCH THRIFT SHOP RETURNS 1942 WEDDING BOOK OF COUPLE MURDERED AT AUSCHWITZ (JTA) — AMSTERDAM — Using social media, a thrift store near the Dutch capital returned the 1942 wedding book of a Jewish couple who perished in Auschwitz to their family.
The Kringloper Almere shop on Jan. 25 appealed to Facebook users to help locate the owners of a notebook that celebrated the union on May 31, 1942, of Flora and Louis in the presence of at least 10 witnesses, who signed the booklet.
The item, which is decorated with one Star of David drawn in blue ink, came into Kringloper’s possession earlier this month.
“It has little financial value but could have enormous emotional one, so we decided to try and find the owners if they were still alive or their descendants,” Bob Baars, who works at the Kringloper, told Omroep Flevoland, a local broadcaster.
Read by at least 160,000 people, the shop’s Facebook post, which carried pictures of the wedding book, led to the discovery that the couple was deported four months after the wedding to the Westerbork concentration camps in the east of the Netherlands and from there to Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. They were murdered in that camp’s gas chambers in September.
On Jan. 25, two days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a niece of the groom contacted the Kringloper shop. The staff gave her the book.
FACEBOOK’S ZUCKERBERG SURPASSES KOCH BROTHERS, NOW WORLD’S 6TH WEALTHIEST PERSON (JTA) — Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the richest Jewish person in the world, has become the sixth-wealthiest overall.
Zuckerberg, 31, has a net worth of $47.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, slightly ahead of the Koch brothers’ fortune valued at $45.9 billion, Bloomberg Business reported last week.
He moved past the Kochs when his fortune rose $6 billion in trading Jan. 28, when Facebook reported record earnings. In October, Zuckerberg was listed No. 8 on the Bloomberg index.
Bill Gates, Amancio Ortega, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos and Carlos Slim are the top 5 on the index.
Among Jews, Zuckerberg is ahead of Oracle’s Larry Ellison, who is No. 10 overall.
In December, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced plans to donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares to charity over their lifetimes.