Abe Foxman criticizes local approach on Armenian issue

[Ian David]

ADL national director calls out Boston's Jewish community leaders

In an interview published on Oct. 26 by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, criticized Boston’s Jewish leadership for its handling of this summer’s controversy surrounding recognition of the Armenian genocide. Foxman accused the local community of not giving proper priority to Israeli interests, singling out Combined Jewish Philanthropies President Barry Shrage and Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston Executive Director Nancy K. Kaufman.

<snip>

Kaufman was the driving force on a petition signed by local groups that urged Foxman to recognize the Armenian massacres as genocide.
“We have nothing to apologize for,” said Alan Ronkin, deputy director of the JCRC. “We have never personally attacked Foxman. The fact that he personally attacked us is outrageous.”

<snip>

Foxman attributed the Boston Jewish community’s diminished sense of self-preservation to the high instance of intermarriage and assimilation in the Boston area. According to Combined Jewish Philanthropy’s 2005 Community Study, 29 percent of all Jewish households in Greater Boston are intermarried.

<snip>

“This is simply a conflict between the more narrow or limited local idealistic interests which focused on local politics and acknowledging a past genocide, versus the broader and more pragmatic concerns of the national leadership which focused on support for preventing a future genocide,” said Grand Rabbi Y. A. Korff.*

In perhaps his most biting criticism of the local community, Foxman asserted that area Jews no longer care about the fate of the Jewish state as much as they once did.

More:
http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/news/?content_id=3928


*"Notable Quotations from George Santayana
'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'
Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner's, 1905, page 284"



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