Other items in today’s column include:
* Vision Slate seeks to empower next generation, create new paradigm for Israel
*Political bytes
*Recommended reading
*In memoriam
SAN DIEGO — The Anti-Defamation League currently partners with approximately 100 local schools in its “No Place for Hate” program, and next semester that number will go up to 150 schools, says Tammy Gillies, the ADL’s regional director in San Diego.
“’No Place for Hate’ is a program in which individual schools have to commit to doing three projects throughout the course of the year around bias and creating a culture of inclusion in their school community, changing the campus climate,” Gillies told me during an interview. “These are actual projects; we don’t believe in just going in and doing an assembly. They submit what they are going to do over the course of a year, and we work with them. When they complete it, they receive a banner that says they are a ‘No Place for Hate’ school.”
Students determine what projects they want to do, so there can be a great deal of variety from school to school. At one elementary school, “kids did a mural where they painted on the wall a ‘no place for hate’ pledge.” around which a curriculum was built so that there was also learning in the classroom. At another school, “We had students who had a focus on LGBTQ issues,” and at others “students who focused on racism issues or anti-Semitism issues.”
Gillies said the “No Place for Hate” message spreads best when it is disseminated by other students. For that reason, “we get 35 students – traditional and non-traditional leaders in the school – together for a three-day program, and they become the trainers for the other students. We’ve learned over the years that students listen to each other much more than they listen to us, so if we train this core group they go into the classes and do the training.”
In addition, ADL trains the educators. “For people who say, ‘I don’t see color; I don’t see …,’ it’s not true. You have to recognize your own bias before you can change how you show yourself to the world,” Gillies said. “Educators and administrators are the core of the school. They stay as students go through. They are the ones who can help with the climate and the expectations of new students coming into the school.”
Among reasons all this is so important is that “we’ve seen that students who are bullied tend not to come to school. The drop out rates are higher. It is lose-lose, every way. Schools that make a commitment to change, diversity and inclusion are more successful and their students are more successful.”
Gillies said, “all the other things ADL does – our advocacy, legislation, investigation – are in the short term, but you can’t arrest your way out of hate, you can’t legislate your way out of hate; the only real way is teaching the next generation. That is a long-term process.”
Because of the current climate in which hate is expressed so openly, Gillies added, “we’ve been set back and it is going to take years and years to get to where we were before.”
The “No Place for Hate” program culminates each academic year with a Walk Against Hate, which will take place this year at 8:30 a.m., Sunday, April 26, at Liberty Station. “This is our third year,” Gillies commented. “The first year we had 1,300 walkers; last year year 3,500 walkers; and this year we are looking to 5,000 or more walkers.”
The walkers come from “the schools that have participated in the No Place for Hate program; they come out and receive their banners,” Gillies said. “It’s families, synagogues, churches, and different groups that want to stand with us. It is really an amazing event.”
Every participant receives a T-shirt, and “if a team gets together and raises enough money, they get a team tent,” Gillies said. “A lot of our synagogues had team tents last year. People brought coffee and bagels, and people got together, to walk as a family, a group, or a chavurah. It is a lot of fun. Last year, it absolutely poured, yet people walked in the rain. They still want to walk again.”
Money raised at the event is plowed back into the “No Place for Hate” program, allowing for its expansion, Gillies said. Registration is available via this website.
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Vision Slate seeks to empower next generation, create new paradigm for Israel
Aaron Raimi, 23, is a San Diego County resident who is on the slate called “Vision: Empowering the Next Generation” in the contest for delegate seats at this coming October’s World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem – a body that allocates approximately $1 billion per year for Zionist activities in Israel and around the world. There are 14 other slates competing for 152 spots allocated to Zionist groups from the United States, with five other San Diego County residents competing on four of them. Online voting continues through March 11 via this website.
The other San Diego County residents are Rabbi Jeremy Gimbel of Congregation Beth Israel, on the Vote Reform slate; Rabbi Ralph Dalin on the Mercaz USA slate which is affiliated with the Conservative Jewish movement; Micah “Mitch” Danzig on the Herut Zionist slate, which identifies with the Revisionist policies of the late Ze’ev Jabotinsky; and the Kol Israel slate, which includes local StandWithUs executives Yael Steinberg and Jonathan Bell.
Raimi’s family alternated between the Reform upbringing of his mother, and more traditional upbringing of his father. For two months before going on a Birthright Israel trip when he was 19, Raimi studied for his bar mitzvah with Rabbi Mendy Rubenfeld, the assistant rabbi at Chabad of Poway, and then had the ceremony in Jerusalem. Because he and his family slept in late last April 27, they were not present on the day that a gunman opened fire on his congregation, killing Lori Gilbert-Kaye, and wounding Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein and congregant Almog Peretz and his niece Noya Dahan, an elementary school student. He said he knows and admires Gilbert-Kaye’s widower, Dr. Howard Kaye, whom he called a “rock” of the congregation.
At the University of California Santa Barbara, Raimi became active in pro-Israel groups, particularly Students Supporting Israel (SSI)and Israel Student Leaders, on which he served on the board. He was among a group of pro-Israel students who helped defeat a resolution before the Student Senate calling for a boycott of Israel, a resolution that was debated until 5 a.m, one morning before it was defeated.
Thanks to his student activism, he was invited as a student leader by the Zionist Organization of America to participate on a 2 ½ week long tour of Israel, during which he met Rabbi Yehuda Hakohen, a settler in the West Bank (also known as Judea and Samaria), who is opposed to the creation of a separate Palestinian state, arguing that Jews and Palestinians through dialogue can find a solution to their differences without any specific formula being imposed upon them.
Rabbi Hakohen, who changed Raimi’s outlook on the Arab-Israeli conflict, subsequently invited him to become a part of the Vision slate, which Raimi describes as “the only slate running that isn’t specifically right-wing or left-wing and that we can be inclusive for all concerned.”
The policy proposed by the Vision slate includes “trying to purchase more land in Judea and Samaria so more Jews can live there; allocating funds to grassroots peace initiatives for Israelis and Palestinians; not allocating funds to organizations that want a two-state solution; and passing resolutions empowering youth and the next generation of Jews to be active in the Jewish future.”
“Vision,” he added, “is committed to a non-partitioned homeland for the Jewish people in which Jews and Palestinians can attain their respective aspirations without living in conflict with one another.”
Conversations with Palestinians during his recent trip persuaded him that notwithstanding the statements and policies of governmental leaders on all sides of the conflict, grassroots Palestinians want peace and harmonious relations as much as grassroots Israelis do.
“I talked to Palestinian workers at a factory near the city of Ariel; they basically said that what they want is to be able to work in peace and provide for their families. They put the blame on the governments, rather than the people,” said Raimi.
“I also met a couple of independent Palestinians business owners who said they want to work with Jews more. One, who is a businessman in Gaza who is allowed to come into Israel on a day pass, said Hamas makes it impossible for him to do such business. Another worker at a factory told me that BDS (boycott, sanctions and divestiture) activists harm the economy for them, making it difficult for them to get out of their economic situations.
“I also heard from Palestinians who said they are too often grouped in [by Israelis] with radical elements like Hamas. Jews think all they want to do is hurt Jews, and that is not the case at all. I also heard some more hostile messages. Some Palestinians felt like second-class citizens.
“The main takeaway I got was if there were more ways to engage in dialogue with the other, and less interference from governments and less threats of being imprisoned or attacked for it; there would be a way to heal the divisions by having tough dialogues with each other, and not being afraid of each other.
“We don’t have to be stuck in the past,” Raimi said. “We want to create a new conversation around the conflict. There are terrible things that happened to our brothers and sisters in Israel, and if we can find a new way, then maybe we can escape that past and the cycles of violence.”
The political science major, who suffered a back injury keeping him out of university for a while, said he expects to enroll at San Diego State University this fall to complete a bachelor’s degree in political science.
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Political bytes
*In a precinct by precinct tally, The San Diego Union-Tribune found that Bernie Sanders was the top finisher in 1,029 precincts, Joe Biden in 501 precincts, Michael Bloomberg in 77 precincts and Elizabeth Warren in 14 precincts.
*After another day of counting at the County Registrar of Voters on Sunday, standings were the same in races that San Diego Jewish World is following closely. Democratic Assemblyman Todd Gloria continues to lead the race for San Diego mayor by a comfortable margin, but the race for second place–and a November run off spot–is comparatively close, with only 1,264 votes separating third-place finisher Barbara Bry, a Democrat, from her City Council colleague, Scott Sherman, a Republican. To give you a sense of how close that is, the race for the District 5 seat of the San Diego City Council now has a gap of 955 votes between front runner Marni Von Wilpert and Joe Leventhal — but remember there are nine council districts in the City of San Diego, whereas the mayor’s constituency includes all those districts. Another relatively close race is in the 50th Congressional District, which Duncan Hunter had to leave after he was convicted for misappropriation of campaign funds. Ammar Campa-Najjar, the Democrat, has a lead of over 20,000 votes over second-place finisher Darrell Issa, the former Republican congressman. Issa is separated from the third-place finisher, Carl DeMaio, a Repubican, by 3,466 votes.
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Recommended reading
In the Book Section of today’s San Diego Union-Tribune (Page E-9), freelance writer Denise Davidson interviews Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon, a novel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as seen through the eyes of two peace activist fathers who both lost a daughter to sectarian violence. McCann will speak at 7 p.m.. Monday, March 9, at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice on the University of San Diego campus.
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In Memoriam
A family-submitted obituary in today’s San Diego Union-Tribune told of the death on Feb. 26 of Roberta Joy Naiman, 92, of complications from Alzheimer’s. She was the daughter of Philip & Mary Kantor, wife of Maurie (Morrie) Naiman, and sister of Dwain Kantor and Arlen Kantor, all of whom died before she did. She is survived by sons Michael and Randall, daughter Phyllis, three grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
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Donald H. Harrison, editor of San Diego Jewish World, would like to wish a happy birthday to his grand-niece, Jessica Harrison. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com