Annual Meeting - 12.03.2002

 

 

 

 

 

Annual Board of Governors Meeting   December 3, 2002 At NCSJ’s new offices 2020 K Street, NW Washington, DC

photos: Ron Sachs/CNP (l.-r.) Ambassador Shavkat Khamrakulov of Uzbekistan, NCSJ Chairman Robert J. Meth, Ambassador Baktybek Abdrisayev of the Kyrgyz Republic

 

NEW NCSJ LEADERSHIP

Chairman: Robert J. Meth, M.D.

President: Joel M. Schindler, Ph.D.

 

 

	Senator George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), Member of U.S. Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) "Anti-Semitism in the OSCE Region"
	Dr. Thomas F. Farr Director, Office of International Religious Freedom, Department of State "Laws on Religion"
	Tribute to Harold Paul Luks Outgoing Chairman, NCSJ
Ron Sachs/CNP	Ambassador Daniel S. Fried Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Eurasian Affairs, National Security Council "U.S. Policy Toward the Successor States"

Updates on:

Jackson-Vanik Amendment

Community Partnerships

Anti-Semitism in the FSU

 

Read report from 2002 Annual Board of Governors Meeting

Read report from Community Services Committee Meeting

Meet our Diplomatic Guests

Read report from 2001 Annual Board of Governors Meeting

 

 

 

Read report from 2001 Annual Board of Governors Meeting

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2002 Annual Board of Governors Meeting

NCSJ’s first Board Meeting since moving to K Street drew nearly 100 participants, including the ambassadors of Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Netherlands (incoming Chair-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and Uzbekistan, as well as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Steven Pifer and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual. Representatives of the embassies of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine also attended. Reports on the budget, community services and the Jackson-Vanik Amendment preceded keynote presentations by Senator George V. Voinovich (R-OH); Dr. Thomas Farr, Director of the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom and Deputy to the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom; and Ambassador Daniel S. Fried, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council. NCSJ also honored Harold Paul Luks as outgoing Chairman, and elected incumbent President Robert J. Meth, M.D., to the Chairmanship. Joel M. Schindler, Ph.D., was elected to succeed Dr. Meth as NCSJ President. 

HAROLD PAUL LUKS: Jackson-Vanik Update

Harold Paul Luks provided an update on the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, reaffirming NCSJ’s support for the “graduation” of Russia. U.S. legislators will take up the issue again in 2003, and, as Mr. Luks explained, NCSJ will work with Congress for passage of a graduation bill that contains substantive safeguards for human rights and religious freedom in Russia. Such language underscores the U.S. and Russian commitments on these issues, and recognizes the ongoing work to resolve such crucial concerns as the restitution of communal property. 

Harold Luks stated: “We like to say ‘if you restitute it they will come.’ It elicits a laugh sometimes but for a community that has lost its infrastructure, it is crucial for a synagogue and school or another religious property to be returned – the ability for Jewish organizations to recreate themselves in multiple forms, and to have various political opinions and for those opinions to often clash in a very direct way is in fact a function of having a place in which people can meet and rediscover, let’s call it, the many rooms of the Jewish house.”

SENATOR GEORGE V. VOINOVICH (R-OH)

Ron Sachs/CNP

Margery Kohrman of Cleveland, NCSJ Vice President, introduced the first guest speaker, Senator George V. Voinovich (R-OH) and thanked the former Cleveland Mayor and Ohio Governor for his lifelong leadership and dedication to human rights and Soviet Jewry. Sen. Voinovich, a member of the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) or Helsinki Commission, had just returned from accompanying President Bush to the Prague NATO Summit 2002, at which the North Atlantic Council invited seven new countries into the security alliance. Sen. Voinovich compared some states formerly in the Soviet sphere — such as the Baltic states, which have just joined NATO — to those such as Romania which are still struggling with a repressive political legacy and prolonged economic depression. Given the security risks of unstable regimes on European borders, the OSCE and CSCE should continue their efforts to combat the rise of extremism in Europe, and particularly anti-Semitism. 

Senator Voinovich reported on a May 2002 CSCE hearing on anti-Semitism in the OSCE region and sessions on anti-Semitism at the July OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Berlin (both involving NCSJ participation). He called for “a special session at the OSCE on anti-Semitism — to single it out. . .to give it the kind of priority that it needs right now.”

“We spoke to the President about his involvement. What we need is. . .a U.S. policy that we promote through various organizations to deal with anti-Semitism. . . there’s got to be an identifiable strategy that we can monitor. . .In addition to that we need to tackle the problem of anti-Semitism here in the United States — which is growing.” 

DR. THOMAS FARR


Ron Sachs/CNP

Dr. Thomas Farr spoke about religion laws, with a focus on those of France, Belarus, and Russia. “Quite often these laws are a reflection of the deeper society, of political, economic problems,” Dr. Farr explained. He pointed to the U.S. Government’s concern about a French law regulating organizations, including religious organizations to illustrate the difference between democratic philosophies in France and the United States — where politicians have expressly avoided regulating religion. 

In post-communist states such as Russia and Belarus, religion is being equated with national identity; in both states the Russian Orthodox Church takes primacy among a small family of ‘traditional’ religions, putting newer, foreign-based groups at a disadvantage. Dr. Farr’s office has been particularly critical of a recently-enacted Belarusian law he described as “perhaps the most potentially troublesome if not lethal act [or] law on religions that we have seen in any country that passes laws through parliaments.” 

In response to the Belarus law, the Office of International Religious Freedom is advocating “steady public pressure to make it clear to the Belarusian government that the actions being taken are simply unacceptable to the international community. . . what they’re doing with respect to the religion law, what they’re doing with respect to the 19th century synagogue which was destroyed last year, what they’re doing with respect to the prospect of destroying a 16th century synagogue ruin, and making a parking lot out of it, is absolutely unacceptable any way you cut it.” 

“In Russia, the outcome is somewhat attenuated by the development of democratic institutions and by the beginnings of a judiciary,” he noted.

LUKS TRIBUTE


Ron Sachs/CNP

At lunch, NCSJ Executive Director Mark B. Levin and incoming NCSJ Chairman Dr. Robert J. Meth paid tribute to outgoing Chairman Harold Luks, and read a letter from Israeli President Moshe Katsav recognizing Luks’ service on behalf of the Jewish people. Dr. Meth spoke of his experiences working with Mr. Luks: “You have crafted and spread a message that resonates at a time when the diplomats of the successor states are our partners, when countries once under Communist rule are now joining NATO, and when Jewish communities across the former Soviet Union are reviving and retrieving their lost heritage. Anyone who knows NCSJ, anyone who knows Harold Luks, knows that this is not in any way a farewell gift.” Meth and Levin then presented Mr. Luks with an Agam siddur (prayer book) in recognition of his tenure at NCSJ and his contributions to Jewish life.

AMBASSADOR DANIEL FRIED


Ron Sachs/CNP

Mr. Levin introduced the keynote speaker, Ambassador Daniel Fried, who has long been engaged in issues of human rights, restitution and combating anti-Semitism, and has been working closely with NCSJ in efforts to “graduate” Russia from the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. Ambassador Fried discussed U.S. policy toward the successor states with respect to these and other issues.

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December 2002 Community Services Committee Meeting

NCSJ’s Community Services Committee met on the morning of December 3, providing an opportunity to those involved in community partnerships in the successor states to learn about programs and resources available to them as well as share ideas and problems. Representatives of NCSJ member organizations, Federations and Jewish Community Relations Councils heard from Dr. Judith Wolf, Committee Chair, and Lesley Weiss, NCSJ Director of Community Services and Cultural Affairs; Jeffrey Farrow, Executive Director of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation for America’s Heritage Abroad; Christina Miner of the U.S. State Department; and Diane Gardsbane, Kolot Project Director and consultant to Jewish Women International.

 

PRESERVATION  AND FUNDING
	Jeffrey Farrow explained the purpose of the Commission for Preservation — to urge the protection of and preservation of communal properties in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union – and described projects the Commission has facilitated in the former Soviet Union. Most recently, the Commission participated in the opening of Latvia’s Rumbula Forest Holocaust memorial in November 2002, a project the Commission helped fund. Mr. Farrow also discussed prospects for future collaboration between the Commission and NCSJ. Christina Miner, Chief of the Europe and Eurasia Division of the Office of Citizen Exchanges, part of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, reviewed the grants process administered through her office and discussed future grants of interest to NCSJ and its member agencies.
PARTNERSHIPS
Ron Sachs/CNP	Diane Gardsbane and Lesley Weiss spoke about the very successful domestic violence awareness program, funded by Ms. Miner’s office, which brought together Jewish leaders with elected officials, clergy and police to address the problem of domestic violence in two Russian cities, Tula and Voronezh. Kolot is a partnership between NCSJ, Jewish Women International (JWI), Project Kesher, and the Russian Jewish Congress (RJC). The program represented the first time these communities had discussed the issue of domestic violence in a public forum, and as a result of the program’s success the Jewish community is seen as a leader in working to address domestic abuse. The Jewish communities in both cities have been invited to participate in activities with police and to serve on key government committees, and the project will serve as a model for similar FSU projects.  There are many opportunities for Federations and national agencies to be involved with communities in the successor states, and NCSJ hopes to continue to build on existing partnerships as well as create new ones with Jews in the successor states.  For more information on the Community Services Committee, please contact Lesley Weiss.

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Our Diplomatic Guests

Ron Sachs/CNP

 

 

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