by Elaine Durbach
NJJN Bureau Chief/Central

June 18, 2009

As the White House and Israeli officials sparred over the future of the Jewish settlements beyond Israel’s green line, people gathered in local living rooms and synagogues in support of the Jewish enclave that gave birth to the modern settlement movement.

Last weekend’s “Hebron Shabbat in New Jersey” was marked with special services at area synagogues and afternoon gatherings at private homes in five different communities — Elizabeth, Hillside, West Orange, Livingston, and Springfield — each with a guest speaker from Israel with a Hebron connection.

Late on Saturday evening, after Shabbat, participants were invited to a melave malka and kumsitz — a festive gathering in the back garden of the Elizabeth home of David and Syndi Romanoff. A few hundred people attended the earlier sessions, and as many as 100 made it to the final event.

David Romanoff and Marty Knecht, also of Elizabeth, are cochairs of New Jersey Communities United for Hebron, which, together with the Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund, organized the June 13 programs.

Romanoff held the first such event in Elizabeth last year. “A simple didactic approach” gave rise to the occasion, the Elizabeth businessman said. “I wanted more people to know about Hebron, to develop a groundswell of support for the people there.”

The synagogues involved — all Orthodox — included the Elmora Avenue Shul in Elizabeth, Adath Israel in Hillside, Ahawas Achim B’nai Jacob and David in West Orange, the Synagogue of the Suburban Torah Center and Congregation Etz Chaim in Livingston, and Congregation Israel of Springfield.

Home of one of Judaism’s holiest sites — the Cave of Machpela, the traditional tomb of Abraham and other biblical patriarchs and matriarchs — Hebron also saw the modern rise of the settler movement when a small group of Jews moved into the overwhelmingly Arab city shortly after Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War. Jews had left Hebron in 1929 after 67 Jews were killed in a Muslim-led pogrom.

Today a heavily guarded enclave of fewer than 600 Jews lives among some 130,000 Arabs, while an additional 6,000 Jews live in the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba.

While the Obama administration and perhaps a majority of American Jews and Israelis envision a peace process that includes the eventual abandonment of the least populous settlements, speakers during the Hebron Shabbat said the Jewish community there is essential to Israel’s security and the historical and religious claims of Zionism.

‘Justice over security’

At the Romanoff home, the day’s downpour lifted just long enough to allow for a barbecue, a bonfire, and some singing.

The plan was to show a video about Hebron and have a live hook-up to the Machpela site.

Romanoff’s son labored mightily to organize a projection onto a screen suspended on the back wall of their home, but the rain closed in again.

It was close to midnight and some people left; others moved inside to hear brief statements from the Israeli guests — one of whom insisted that the rain was a sure sign of divine endorsement.

Hebron spokesman Noam Arnon, who also spoke earlier in West Orange, asserted that Israel’s claim to the land lay in its history. Hebron’s ancient Jewish holy sites should be cited as symbolic of the Jewish claim to the land, far pre-dating any Muslim claim.

“When I tell people that the Machpela is more than 2,000 years old, they have nothing more to say,” he told the gathering.

Arnon said that Israelis had shifted their focus from the justice of their cause — which won international support in 1948 — to the question of security, yielding the justice issue to the Palestinians.

“Justice always wins over security,” he said.

Rabbi Yaakov “Ketzeleh” Katz, a Knesset member who chairs the National Union Party, in the afternoon had addressed some 100 people who crowded into the home of Jay and Brenda Buchsbaum in Elizabeth. At the midnight session, for those worried about the “demographic problem” — that is, a Palestinian population that will eventually outgrow the Jewish population in Israel and the territories it administers beyond the green line — Katz cited statistics he said should give American Jews cause for optimism.

He pointed out that since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Jewish population of the country has grown to over six million. Contrary to the figures more often cited that suggest that Arab fertility rates guarantee an eventual Arab majority, he said, the Jewish population was outstripping that rate.

“As Arabs move into the middle class, they are having smaller families,” said Katz. “The girls who finish high school and go on to college don’t want more than one or two children — like their Israeli counterparts. But the Orthodox Jewish families are having a huge number of children — 10, 11, 14 — and their numbers are growing very fast.”

Other Israeli speakers included Hebron tourism director Rabbi Simcha Hochbaum, who spoke in Hillside; Yossi Baumol, executive director of the Hebron Fund, who spoke in Livingston; and the chief of security in Hebron, Yoni Bleichbard, who spoke in Springfield.

Interviewed at the Romanoff’s home, Bleichbard insisted that conditions in Hebron, where Jews and Palestinians would frequently clash, have improved over the past couple of years. He said that the Israeli army had extended its control of the area. He said too that the local Arab population was growing tired of the trouble caused by Palestinian militants. These days, he said, Jewish children can move without fear through the streets.

Dr. Max Doctoroff of Springfield described Bleichbard’s afternoon talk as inspiring. He said American media make the Jews of Hebron sound like crazy radicals. “People need to see that they are regular, normal people,” he said.

The New Jersey gatherings were sponsored by Bruce and Jill Koblentz, the owners of Blue Streak Motors in Elizabeth. Bruce said he was no expert on the subject of Hebron. His connection was simply pragmatic. “I agreed to sponsor the event because the people it attracted are the kind of customers I want to reach,” he said.

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