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 ASSEMBLYMAN JOEL ANDERSON

____________________ The Jewish Citizen              by Donald H. Harrison

Anderson used 2-pronged strategy to sell

veteran legislators on Iran divestment

EL CAJON, California  --With Democrats controlling the state Assembly by a 48-32 margin, normally you would not expect a freshman Republican legislator from a suburban San Diego district to make a lot of legislative news. Rather, you’d expect him to be squeezed with his staff into a tiny Capitol office suite and assigned to low-profile committees where he might languish as a minority voice until his maximum three terms were blissfully over.  

When Joel Anderson (Republican, El Cajon) took office last December, all seemed to be going according to such expectations.  He and his staff members were assigned to Capitol suite 2111, which is tiny compared to the offices of more senior members. The committees he drew were ones that many members of the Capitol news corps rarely visit: Public Employees and Retirement and Social Security; Public Safety, and Water, Parks and Wildlife.

It seemed that for the foreseeable future all anyone would ever say about Anderson was “Joel, who?”

However, no one—not even Anderson—had reckoned on how important his previous service as a board member and president of the Padre Dam Municipal Water District would become.
 
In that capacity, he had learned that there was a $2 million deficit in the medical portion of the water district’s pension plan—a deficit that required him and fellow board members to scrutinize the budget in order to “backfill” it.

On receiving his legislative committee assignment, he and his staff decided to pore over the books of the multibillion dollar pension funds operated for state employees and public school teachers to see if there were any similar deficits that might cause problems later.

But instead of deficits, Anderson found investment patterns that prompted him to complain:  The two state funds had invested in foreign companies that were doing business with Iran.  By his estimate, almost 10 percent of the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) was tied up in companies doing business with Iran.

Had they been American companies, they would have been prohibited under U.S. imposed sanctions from doing business with Iran.  But because they were foreign based companies, such as Royal Dutch Shell and the French energy conglomerate Total, they did not come under the purview of American authority.

But why were the two largest public employee funds in the state supporting companies doing business with Iran, especially in its energy and defense sectors? Anderson asked managers of these funds.  (Jump to continuation)



 

Jerusalem Diaries          Judy Lash Balint

Fifteen sure ways to tell it is Succot in Jerusalem



BOOTHS—Two sukkot make their appearances in Jerusalem
Judy Lash Balint photos

JERUSALEM—Fifteen ways you know Sukkot is coming in Jerusalem: 

1. The clang of metal poles and the sounds of hammering are practically constant as Jerusalem's apartment dwellers hurry to erect their sukkot and squeeze them into small balconies, odd-shaped gardens and otherwise derelict rooftops.

2. The tourists have landed!  Overwhelmingly religious English and French speaking, they jam the city's take-out places and restaurants, and may be seen in packs wandering up and down Emek Refaim and Derekh Betlechem talking to their friends at top volume on their cell phones.

3.  Almost every non-profit group worth its salt has scheduled a fund-raising and/or familiarization event for the days of Chol Hamoed Sukkot, aimed at capturing the attention of the wealthy temporary Jerusalem residents.

4. Real estate agents are taking a deep breath before their busiest week of the year as they prepare to pitch their over-priced wares to eager foreign buyers. Each of the many luxury residential building projects around town managed to put up billboards depicting the completed construction and inviting prospective buyers in for a tour of an unfinished building site.

4. You can't get on a bus without being poked in the rear a dozen times with someone's stray lulav.

5.  The sweet smell of etrogim in Jerusalem's Machane Yehuda (Yehuda Market) is overpowering. Huge crowds descend on a lot on Jaffa Road neae the market to vie for the best lulav and etrog.

6.  One enterprising bookstore is offering "Machzor rentals" for tourists who inadvertently left their holiday prayer books at home.

7.  You've never seen such gaudy sukkah decorations in your life—unless you've been to Wal Mart on Christmas eve.  Kiosks manned by bearded Haredim in Meah Shearim are selling gold, green and red tinsel hangings—exact replicas of Noel decorations in the Old Country.

8.  Huge piles of schach (palm fronds for the roof of the sukkah) cover major city squares, and citizens are invited to take as much as they need for free.

9. The usual throngs of traditional Jews are expected at the Western Wall for the thrice-yearly observance of the ancient ritual of Birkat Cohanim—Blessing by the Priests—that takes place during the intermediate days of Sukkot.

10.  Like Christmas tree lots back in the US, empty city lots all over Jerusalem are taken over to sell sukkot of every size and description.  Some are marketed by large companies and feature the latest space-saving technology and hardiest material, while others are simpler affairs made of tubular piping and plastic walls..  Every kosher restaurant in town has a sukka of some kind and each boasts bigger and better holiday specials to entice customers.

11. Since the entire week of Sukkot is a national holiday you'll have a tough time deciding which festival/event to take part in.  There's the New Age Bereishit Festival at Dugit beach; The Tamar music and arts fest at Ein Gedi; Acco's acclaimed Fringe Theater Festival; Rishon L'Tzion's Wine Festival and a Storytellers Festival in Givatayim, to name just a few.

12.  Touring the country is another favorite Sukkot activity and every political group is promoting trips to "See For Yourself." Hevron is a perennial favorite for Chol Hamoed (intermediate festival days) with a special opening of the Isaac Hall in the Cave of the Patriarchs that's normally off-limits to Jewish visitors. The far left organization Ir Amim funded by the European Union and the Ford Foundation, offers to take visitors to see their version of Jerusalem.

13.  Not to be left out are those Christian friends of Israel—the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem will bring 6,000 members from 80 nations to attend their annual Feast of Tabernacles celebration. Opening ceremonies this year will take place at Ein Gedi, near the Dead Sea.

The Christian contingent will also take part in another annual Sukkot event, the Jerusalem March, dressed in costume of their countries of origin.

Organizers claim that the Christian event will pump $10 million into the local economy, taking up 15,000 hotel room nights during their stay.

14. Another prominent group of tourists set to arrive are refugees from the young frum singles scene who make an annual migration to Jerusalem from the Upper West Side for Sukkot.  Discreet meetings of earnest, well-scrubbed, modestly dressed twenty-somethings take place in all the major hotel lobbies.

15. And speaking of refugees—spare a thought for those 1,700 families expelled from their homes in Gush Katif in August 2005.  More than two years on and hardly any of them are living in permanent housing. 1,375 former Gush Katif residents are still unemployed. Several have died at a young ages and many couples have divorced due to the economic and social pressure and the uncertain future they face. Neither they nor the Israelis in and around Sderot who continue to endure Hamas shelling will need to be reminded of one of the essential messages of the Sukkot holiday—the flimsiness of our physical existence and our reliance on God for sustenance and shelter.

Jerusalem Diaries II: What's Really Happening in Israel (Xulon Press) by Judy Lash Balint is now available at your favorite bookstore or from www. amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com

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The Jews 'Down Under'              By Garry Fabian

Goldwasser buoyed by MP's

story of rescued fighter pilot

MELBOURNE—SHLOMO Goldwasser, the father of kidnapped Israeli soldier Ehud Goldwasser, has taken heart from a story he heard from a Victorian Member of Parliament (MP) in Melbourne last week.

Jan Kronberg, a Liberal MLC for Eastern Metropolitan Region, told  Goldwasser about her husband Michael's cousin, Chaim Ram, an Israeli fighter-pilot whose plane was shot down in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, after which he was captured by Syria.

"Chaim Ram flew one of the first planes to be scrambled on the first day of the Yom Kippur War. He was shot down over Syria and his welfare and whereabouts were unknown for six months," said Kronberg.

"Almost unbelievably, a relative here in Melbourne noticed him in television footage of a camp in Syria on the Channel Nine News. Upon his repatriation, he later commanded an air base in southern Israel,"

Kronberg related her account of Ram "to give Mr Goldwasser a glimmer of hope", she told the AJN this week.

State Zionist Council of Victoria executive director Ginette Searle, who was in the official party that introduced Goldwasser to 14 state MPs and later to Premier John Brumby, said the impact of the story on Goldwasser "was profound".

Goldwasser's meeting with the MPs was organised by Caulfield Liberal MLA Helen Shardey and Prahran Labor MLA Tony Lupton.

Ehud Goldwasser, 32, and Eldad Regev, 26, were captured by Hezbollah  in a cross-border raid into northern Israel on July 12 last year. Eighteen days earlier, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, 20, was abducted by Hamas gunmen in Gaza.

During the Australian leg of a worldwide campaign he is conducting for Hezbollah to free the pair, Goldwasser met with Liberal and ALP frontbenchers in Canberra, addressed Jewish community rallies in Melbourne and Sydney and spoke at Temple Beth Israel on Kol Nidrei and St Kilda shul on Yom Kippur morning.


●Ministerial staffer apologises for 'Nazi' jibe

CANBERRA—A Labor candidate whose military service in Iraq was likened to that of a Nazi concentration camp guard has accepted an apology from the senior ministerial staffer at the centre of the jibe.

Colonel Mike Kelly, the ALP's candidate in the NSW seat of
Eden-Monaro, said on Thursday afternoon he had received a written apology from Special Minister of State Gary Nairn's chief-of-staff, Dr Peter Phelps, over the comments he made at a recent public meeting in Queanbeyan, near Canberra.

"I accept Dr Phelps' apology and I'm ready to move on," said Colonel Kelly, whose wife is Jewish.

During question time at the meeting, Dr Phelps accused Colonel Kelly of adopting the "Nuremberg defence", a claim used by former Nazis at the Nuremberg trials that they were simply following orders, in relation to his service in Iraq.

While the ALP has called for Dr Phelps' dismissal, Nairn is standing by his staffer, claiming he was at the meeting in a personal capacity.

Yesterday, Member for Melbourne Ports Michael Danby, the only Jew in Federal Parliament, condemned the remarks.

"I felt sick to my stomach sitting in Federal Parliament hearing some of these comparisons," he told The Australian.

Colonel Kelly said that irrespective of specific government policies, he was "proud of his 20 years of military service" and was determined to fight a "clean campaign" against Nairn for the bellwether seat, which traditionally is held by whichever party is in government.

●Distinguished Jewish Soldier dies, aged 99

SYDNEY—Australia’s oldest living Jewish soldier, Major-General Paul Cullen, died at the age of 99, five months shy of his 100th birthday, at Sydney's Montefiore Home on Wednesday morning.

Major-General Cullen, who is only the second Australian Jew to hold the title after Sir John Monash, fought for the Australian Defence Force in Palestine in 1940 against the Italian, German and French armies.

He was the first president of Austcare, a world humanitarian
foundation, and from 1979-81 was president of Sydney's JewishCare, which his father, Samuel Cohen, helped establish.

Federal Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women president Wesley Browne said Major-General Cullen was a good man who will leave a great legacy.

"He was the most senior Jewish ex-serviceman in Australia, and
probably the most decorated. He had a wonderful record of helping the community and was an incredible man," Browne said.

Away from the military, he had several business and other interests, including co-founding Festival Records.

Major-General Cullen will have a military funeral at Victoria
Barracks and then be cremated on Wednesday.

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People of the Books

The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity by Hyam Maccoby.  Barnes and Noble Books, New York. 237 pp.

Reviewed by David Strom

SAN DIEGO—The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity by Hyam Maccoby is an interesting account of the creation of the Christian religion.  Maccoby tackled the puzzling question of the origins of Christianity. Who was the founder of Christianity? For most, especially the lay people, the answer seemed obvious—Jesus of Nazareth.  For Hyam Maccoby the answer was not obvious.

Maccoby, a Talmudic scholar, built a strong argument for Paul as the inventor/architect of Christianity.  He claimed Paul used elements of Judaism, Gnosticism, and pagan mystery cults and fused them around the story of Jesus’ crucifixion.  He asserted  Paul’s claim to be a Pharisee was totally false.  This is not a traditional view of Paul.   It is unfamiliar, yet relevant in any realistic assessment of him and his life’s work.

Who and what were the Pharisees that Paul would claim to be one of them?  What were their religious and political views as opposed to those of the Sadducees and other Jewish religious and political groups of the time?  According to Maccoby, Jesus was a Pharisee and followed the Torah. His followers were Pharisees who maintained the Torah and were considered within the normative bounds of the Judaism of the day. 

After the death of Jesus, the followers of the Jerusalem Church maintained their Jewish ways. All of them personally knew Jesus and his teachings.  They did not eat forbidden food; they circumcised their sons and showed great respect for the Torah.  They were, as was Jesus, observant Pharisaic Jews.   They set up synagogues of their own, but they also attended non-Nazarene synagogues.  “The Nazarenes became suspicious of Paul when they heard he was preaching that Jesus was the founder of a new religion that had abrogated the Torah.”  They hadn’t, nor had Jesus.

According to Maccoby, James and Peter, the leaders of the Jerusalem Church, did not agree with the heretical views of Paul.  In fact, they bitterly opposed his thinking and viewed him as a betrayer of the Jewish aims of Jesus.  There were serious differences between the Pauline and Jerusalem interpretations of Jesus’ message. This conflict, simmering for years, finally led to a complete break.  The Pauline Church was founded, comprising in effect a new religion, separated from Judaism.  The Jerusalem Nazarenes, those closest and who knew Jesus personally, did not sever their links to Judaism.  They thought of themselves as “essentially believers in Judaism and who also believed in the resurrection of Jesus, a human Messiah figure.” (Emphasis added.)

They followed Pharisaic interpretations.  They thought of Jesus as the Messiah “in the normal Jewish sense of the term, i.e. a human leader who would restore the Jewish monarchy, drive out the Roman invaders, set up an independent Jewish state, and inaugurate an era of peace, justice and prosperity (known as ‘the kingdom of God’) for the whole world.”  Jesus had “no intention of being crucified” in order to save mankind from eternal damnation by his sacrifice.  In fact Jesus would have regarded “such an idea as pagan and idolatrous, an infringement of the first of the Ten Commandments.”

Paul claimed to have been raised in the Pharisaic tradition. He also stated before he became a follower of Jesus he persecuted Jews who followed Jesus.  Maccoby wrote that Pharisees would not have persecuted those who followed Jesus.  In fact Gamaliel, a leading Pharisee, defended Peter and the other apostles before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish High Court, and won their safety.  Thus, no self respecting Pharisee would have persecuted other Pharisees as Paul claimed to have done.  Maccoby believes Paul worked for the High Priest and his colleagues, the Sadducean party, who opposed the Pharisees.  Thus Paul claimed to be a Pharisee to give himself greater status among the early followers of the charismatic Jesus.

After his conversion, Paul took the view that Christianity was the true Judaism.  “Paul’s doctrine of Jesus is a daring departure from Judaism.  Paul  was advocating a doctrine that seemed to have far more in common with pagan myths than with Judaism: that Jesus was a divine-human person who had descended to Earth from the heavens and experienced death for the express purpose of saving mankind.”  The Jewish followers of Jesus, those that knew Jesus during his lifetime, were shocked by this thought and fought this idea and others of Paul as well.  They lost.  Paul won. And we have mainly Pauline Christianity today.

Maccoby’s The Mythmaker is definitely worth reading and discussing.

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Iran Divestment...
(Continued from above)

According to the assemblyman, their response was that the investments produced good yields, which it was their responsibility to ensure.  Furthermore, Anderson said, the pension fund managers told him they didn't believe there were problems in Iran.

This didn’t sit right with Anderson, who drafted Assembly Bill 221 to require funds controlled by the state of California to divest their holdings in companies trading with Iran either in the areas of defense or energy.  Subsequently adopted by both the Assembly and the Senate, Anderson’s bill soon will be signed into law, according to an announcement this week from the office of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Anderson said that while steering his bill through the Legislature, he stressed fiscal arguments to Republicans and humanitarian arguments to Democrats.  

In his conversations with fellow Republicans, who were suspicious of any state action that might hurt business, Anderson emphasized what he considered to be the folly of investing in a country like Iran.

Recalling that Iranian "students" back in 1979 took over the U.S. embassy and took hostages who were held in captivity for more than a year, Anderson argued that any country that is willing to do something like that may, in the future, decide to nationalize businesses it considers uncooperative.  Investing in companies vulnerable to nationalization is not a good business strategy, he said.

With his own background being an active Kiwanis Club member and the owner of a 70-employee printer and mail house company, Anderson stressed common sense arguments that he thought would appeal to other legislators familiar with small businesses.

Among them was the argument that any country that threatens to obtain nuclear capacity and annihilate Israel is on a collision course not only with Israel but with the United States. "Whether we bomb them, Israel bombs them, or some other country bombs them, someone is going to bomb them," Anderson predicted.  If war breaks out between Iran and the United States, how safe would be those investments then?

Third, he said, "this is an investment strategy that banks on the fact that the federal government won't do its job. We cannot be investing in foreign-owned companies that are skirting American law."

Initially, Democrats were wary of the bill. Alberto Torrico (Democrat, Fremont) initially excoriated it as “an extension of  Bush’s war,” according to Anderson.  However, after the bill cleared the Public Employees and Retirement and Social Security Committee, it gradually began to pick up support.

Noting that California previously had voted to divest in the Sudan, because of genocidal conduct in Darfur, Anderson argued to Democrats that the Iranian regime under the ayatollahs and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was as malevolent as the one in the Sudan.

Ahmadinejad has called for the elimination of Israel from the Middle East—which Anderson said was a veiled call for genocide.  His regime executes homosexuals, puts numerous restrictions on women, and persecutes religious minorities.  What reason was there to support investments in such a regime? Anderson demanded.  He suggested there could be only two explanations, neither of them savory.  Either investors support the goals of the Iranian regime, or they are more interested in money than in morality.

Among the early supporters of Anderson’s cause was Missouri State Treasurer Sarah Steelman whose staff helped counter arguments made by PERS and STRS administrators about the potential economic impact of divestment.  She had on her own followed a similar divestment policy in her state.

Jewish groups and Iranian expatriate groups got behind the measure.   Among the former were the Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, American Jewish Committee, Stand with Us, American Congress of Jewish Survivors, American Jewish Congress, Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, and others.  The measure even drew support from Reza Pahlavi, the deposed crown prince of Iran.

Some well known political figures also lent their support to the divestment campaign including California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and such California Congress members as Howard  Berman, Kevin McCarthy, George Miller, Edward Royce and Brad Sherman.

As the bill worked its way through the committees of the Assembly, was passed without opposition on the Assembly floor; and later gathered similar bipartisan support in the state Senate, its ultimate passage became a foregone conclusion.

Schwarzenegger’s announcement that he would sign the measure meant that a state which has one of the largest economies in the world will throw its economic weight against Iran.

Anderson believes that measures like his and similar bills already adopted or in the process of being adopted in other states not only is prudent investment strategy for public employees, but may contribute to persuading Iran that its wisest course is to make peace with the United States.

Meanwhile, few people in the state Capitol are likely to say “Joel who” anymore.   A bill that grew out of a local experience in San Diego County has catapulted him from obscurity to being a politician with some name recognition.

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