editorials
The Enemy of Our Nemesis
I n our community’s consciousness, Poland, the
site of Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto, is the
graveyard of the Jews. Like so many other places
in Eastern Europe, Jewish life flourished in Poland
until it was crushed by antisemitism, unfiltered hate
and violence.

When World War II broke out, there were 3.3
million Jews in Poland, the second-largest Jewish
community in the world. Eighty-five percent were
murdered in the Holocaust. The pallor of death
and the stories of unimaginable evil haunted our
postwar communal perception of the Polish peo-
ple and their government.

At the end of the Cold War, Poland made a
quick turn toward the West. But even with that
move we saw a disturbing shift in Poland away
from democratic ideals like protection of minori-
ties, and a pronounced move toward populism
and authoritarianism. So, it was disappointing but
not surprising that Poland’s ruling Law and Justice
party eroded the free press, attacked indepen-
dent courts, molested the LGBTQ community and
turned increasingly anti-Europe. And in the pro-
cess, Poland also poured cold water on its rela-
tions will Israel. Just last August, Poland passed
an offensive anti-restitution law that would block
M Jewish property claims from World War II and the
communist era, defying strong opposition from
Israel and the United States. We joined many in
the West who worried where Poland was headed.

Then, in the weeks since Russia invaded
Ukraine, Poland shifted again — taking on the
mantle of “the West” and “Europe,” and rallying
support for Ukraine. Some 2.5 million Ukrainians
have escaped to Poland, more than any other of
Ukraine’s neighbors. And Poland has outpaced
the United States and Western European coun-
tries in sending weapons to Ukraine, in advocat-
ing Ukraine’s immediate admittance to the EU,
in envisioning a permanent American base in
Albright Leaves a Legacy
adeleine Albright, who died last week of
cancer at age 84, left a significant legacy.

She was the first woman to serve as secretary of
state at a time when politics was very much a man’s
game, leaving the door open for Condoleezza Rice
and Hillary Clinton, who both served in the role after
her. She was a refugee and a defender of human
rights and democracy. She also came from a Jewish
family, a history she said she didn’t know until later in
life. It also appears that many of her family members
died in the Holocaust.

Albright was born in Czechoslovakia. When she
was a toddler, her family fled the Nazis. When she
was 11, the family fled the country again, this time
from the communists. They settled in Colorado.

Albright studied political science at Wellesley
College, then got married and started a family.

She earned a Ph.D. in public law and government
at Columbia University, where she studied under
Zbigniew Brzezinski. She later worked as a con-
gressional liaison for Brzezinski, when he was a
national security adviser in the Carter adminis-
tration, and served as a foreign policy adviser for
Rep. Geraldine Ferraro and Gov. Michael Dukakis.

She was also a supporter of Bill Clinton when he
was governor of Arkansas. When Clinton was
16 If any country knows
what it’s like to be sliced
and diced and put out
of business by its larger
neighbors, it’s Poland.

Poland of up to 40,000 troops and transferring
MiG-29 fighter jets to the Ukrainian air force,
something the United States has opposed. Then,
last week, Poland’s prime minister, along with
the prime ministers of the Czech Republic and
Slovenia, rode a train to Kyiv in a very public effort
to bolster Ukraine’s morale.

If any country knows what it’s like to be sliced
and diced and put out of business by its larger
neighbors, it’s Poland. So when Poland sees what
Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine, it may have a
genuine fear that it could be next. But no matter
what is driving its actions, Poland now wears a
white hat and has reached a new level of interna-
tional involvement and attention.

Today’s realities force our Jewish memory
through a mind-bending shift in our perception
of Poland — similar in many respects to our
changing perception of Ukraine. But with Poland
it’s different, as we see Prime Minister Mateusz
Morawiecki, himself an illiberal leader, calling for
support against Putin, another illiberal leader. If
not for the enormity of Putin’s threat, we might
ignore the plea. But we can’t. For now, Poland
and Morawiecki are our friends, and enemies of
our nemesis. JE
MARCH 31, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Regardless of her
complicated Jewish
identity, Albright was
someone the Jewish
community should
be proud of.

elected president, he named Albright ambassa-
dor to the United Nations.

As a diplomat on the world stage — first as
ambassador to the U.N., then as secretary of
state — she wanted the United States to work with
international allies to support human rights. She
opposed Clinton’s decision not to intervene in
the Rwandan genocide. During the Serbian geno-
cide of Bosnian Muslims, she called for airstrikes
against Serbian targets, and was successful in
getting the Clinton administration involved.

She also played a part in Middle East peace
talks. In 1988, when Clinton was leading peace
talks with then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and then-Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat in Wye River, Maryland, Netanyahu ordered
his team to place their suitcases in front of their
cabins as a signal they were leaving. Albright
interceded with Yitzhak Mordechai, the Israeli
defense minister, and the Israeli team decided
to stay. The peace talks led to the Wye River
Memorandum to revive the Israeli-Palestinian
peace process.

When Albright was in her 50s, The Washington
Post uncovered her Jewish past. Her parents,
who had been Jewish, converted to Catholicism,
probably to protect their family from persecution.

Albright was raised Catholic and said she never
knew of her Jewish heritage before the Post dis-
covered it. Many in the Jewish community were
skeptical of her claim and speculated she was hes-
itant to come forward about her history because it
might jeopardize her political aspirations.

Regardless of her complicated Jewish identity,
Albright was someone the Jewish community
should be proud of. She broke a glass ceiling for
women in politics, prioritized human rights on the
world stage and changed the world for the better.

May her memory be a blessing. JE



Why My Synagogue Is Building
a 55-unit Housing Development
for the Homeless
BY BROOKE WIRTSCHAFTER
W hen IKAR, the Jewish spiritual community
where I serve as the director of community
organizing, realized our long-held dream of buying
land in Los Angeles so that we could build a home for
ourselves, we invited the community to imagine what
we’d like to see included as part of this new physical
space. For many of us, and for our leadership, we
know that what we build is a physical expression of
our core Jewish values.

We knew we wanted our first-ever permanent
home to be a hub with a prayer space that would
inspire the spirit, classrooms that would facilitate
learning, an early childhood center to instill joy,
meeting space to foster civic engagement, perfor-
mance space that will feature artists from around the
world, and a cafe that will nurture through food and
relationship-building. But overwhelmingly our community also told us
they wanted this: to manifest our values by building
homes for some of the tens of thousands of our
neighbors who do not have a roof over their heads.

So we formed a partnership with a nonprofit housing
developer, Community Corp. of Santa Monica, and
started working together on a financial arrangement
to share our land and allow them to build a 55-unit
permanent supportive housing development for
formerly unhoused seniors on our site.

In Los Angeles, the price of housing, both to rent
and to own, has skyrocketed in recent years, and
neither wages nor the pace of building have kept up.

As a result, we face a housing crisis of immense pro-
portions, one that is borne most heavily by the peo-
ple in our cities with the least financial resources.

Our tradition calls on us to love the stranger, and
over and over to remember that we were strang-
ers in the Land of Egypt. We can think of no more
important way to do that than to welcome those
who have been cast out as “strangers” into homes
of their own alongside our new communal home.

And yet, we’ve learned how difficult it is and why
it is so expensive to build affordable housing in cit-
ies. While the two partners in our arrangement are
eager to work together and solve problems, we’ve
discovered the degree to which zoning regulations
drive up costs and create uncertainties that can lead
to delays and higher costs.

In California, local governments have the power to
set all kinds of zoning regulations. That allows them
to shape development in ways that may be intended
to ensure safety or protect local residents, but which
also have a long history of excluding people, espe-
cially poor people and people of color, from some
neighborhoods, or even whole cities.

One of the rules that impacts us is the local city
parking requirement for houses of worship. The
rules would require us to build much more parking
than we would choose to accommodate our com-
munity. Underground parking, which is all we have
space for, costs upward of $60,000 per space and
can cost twice that much for each additional deck
below ground. We’d rather build less parking and
keep the overall cost of the project manageable.

Last year, California passed a bill to make it easier
for faith communities to build housing on existing
parking lots. That law allows houses of worship to
remove up to 50 percent of their parking spaces
if they replaced them with affordable housing.

Now, we are proud to sponsor a bill with Assembly
Member Buffy Wicks to extend that flexibility to con-
gregations that are building ground-up projects. Our
bill would excuse faith communities from up to 50%
of their locally zoned parking requirements if they
build affordable housing onsite at the same time.

For us, this is a matter of justice and equity, and
of building our values into the DNA and architecture
of our community. We want to open our home to
people without homes, and reduce our reliance on
private cars as a mode of transportation. We hope
this bill will make it easier for and even inspire other
faith communities in the state to build housing.

Jewish and other faith communities can and
should do more to address the systemic housing
crisis that is driving hundreds of thousands of our
neighbors onto the streets and millions more into
financially precarious and unstable living situations.

The scale of the problem and the obstacles con-
fronting us, however, sometimes keep us from
dreaming big. We have the motivation; IKAR’s expe-
rience shows we also need to unleash the resources
and the human capital to overcome the economic,
policy and political hurdles in our own backyards.

Abraham was known for his concern for offering
welcome to strangers. We can follow his example
by using our land to offer welcome to our neighbors.

All faiths teach the importance of hospitality and
valuing the dignity of each human life. Building more
homes for people and fewer spaces for cars at our
houses of worship is one way we can help realize
that shared vision for a society that centers human
dignity and moves toward cities that are easier to
navigate without a car. I envision a future in which
our community gathers for prayer in our new home,
heartened by the connection to our new neighbors,
who are enjoying some measure of peace and secu-
rity in their new homes as well. JE
Brooke Wirtschafter serves as the director of
community organizing at IKAR, a Jewish com-
munity in Los Angeles, and as a commissioner
on the City of Los Angeles Human Relations
Commission. opinions \ letters
Liberals Should Take SJP at its Word
The Tufts University, Amnesty International and
Sierra Club articles in the March 24 Jewish Exponent
dealing with strategic boycotts of Israel and the
exclusion of Jews, including J Street, hopefully will
awaken J Street and other so-called liberal pro-Israel
Jews. The only solution that Students for Justice in
Palestine want for Israel is a Final Solution. Take them
at their word.

I hope and pray that J Street and the liberal pro-Is-
rael Jewish groups understand that SJP, as did the
Nazis, mean it when they say that their vision for
Palestine is the elimination of our Jewish state, Israel.

Zachary Margolies | Philadelphia
US Asleep Regarding Ukraine
It has been said that the Ukrainian situation “does
not rise to the level of direct U.S. involvement” (“Area
Businessman Aids Extraction Efforts in Ukraine,”
March 24). What sort of devastation of a country,
murder of its civilians and abject misery inflicted
on innocent people would rise to the level that we
should “risk the possibility of a global economic or
shooting war with Russia?”
Vladimir Putin is clearly the aggressor and the war
criminal. NATO needs to lay the ground rules for
Russia in Ukraine. So far, we have let Russia dictate
the rules for our engagement in Ukraine. This is
backwards. On the ground and in the air, Russia invaded a
sovereign nation. Had our government not been
asleep, it would have prepared, without broadcasting
its intentions to the world, air and ground resistance
sufficient for the Russians to understand that setting
one foot on Ukrainian land or airspace would have
been met with fierce resistance from all of NATO,
as if Ukraine were a NATO ally. Then we might have
avoided the current situation.

We should not have been making up excuses
(Ukraine is not in NATO; we risk World War III) for our
failure to take protective military actions beginning
last fall, as we are now beginning to do throughout
our NATO-allied countries. The risk of protecting
Ukrainian airspace is serious, and a delicate line must
be walked. However, I contend this risk is not as seri-
ous as the current carnage.

It is callous and cruel to say this war may continue
for weeks; maybe months. I applaud the U.S., President
Biden, and NATO for the aid it has given to the Ukrainian
people thus far. But, throughout this war, Putin esca-
lates, we send weapons, and yes, humanitarian aid.

Clearly, this is not sufficient. Ukraine is burning. We are
fiddling. We should all be embarrassed. JE
Frank L. Friedman | Delanco, New Jersey
Letters should be related to articles that have run in the print
or online editions of the JE, and may be edited for space and
clarity prior to publication. Please include your first and last name,
as well your town/neighborhood of residence. Send letters to
letters@jewishexponent.com. JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
17