Netanyahu Visit Raises Jewish Issues

With new crises looming in the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday cut short a visit to Los Angeles, but still held to a plan to attend a $10,000-a-plate gala dinner in Beverly Hills in support of a controversial Jewish Orthodox outreach organization.

The dinner, honoring actor Kirk Douglas, was a fund-raiser for Aish HaTorah, which played an important role in Douglas’ recent religious transformation.

The organization is viewed with skepticism by a number of Jewish educators and academic experts on religion, for reasons ranging from its reported involvement in angry protests against non-Orthodox Jews to an approach to young people that one expert called “charismatic, almost cult-like.”

Netanyahu arrived in Los Angeles before dawn Monday, beginning the second day of what was to be a three-day visit to the United States.

He declined to say whether he rearranged his travel plans in order to meet with Jordan’s King Hussein in London, but in Israel an aide said, “I cannot deny that there is going to be a meeting between the prime minister and King Hussein.”

Netanyahu said only: “I have some engagements I wish to keep that are important given events in the region.”

Monday’s events brought an abrupt end to a visit in which the prime minister attempted to smooth over relations with American Jews, many of whom feel slighted by recent debates in Israel over Jewish identity.

On Sunday, Netanyahu spoke before 4,000 delegates to the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations in Indianapolis. Leaders of the Conservative and Reform branches of Judaism in the United States are concerned about legislation in Israel that seeks to cast into civil law an Orthodox monopoly of religious affairs, including the power to recognize marriages and religious conversions.

Netanyahu touched on those themes Monday, when he told the audience at a World Affairs Council luncheon that “if there is a Reform conversion in the United States, in Los Angeles, that was and is and will always be recognized as fully accepted in Israel.”

Still, the prime minister’s appearance at the dinner in support of Aish HaTorah may have heightened those concerns.

Rabbi Harvey J. Fields of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, a leader in both local and national Reform circles, questioned why Netanyahu as the leader of the Jewish state would attend the function.

“He’s flying to L.A. to make this appearance at an Orthodox affair and has refused every similar invitation from the Reform movement since taking office, both in Israel and here,” Fields said. “That’s not about Aish HaTorah, but about Netanyahu and his total insensitivity so far as the majority of Jews living in the U.S. and Canada.”

Aish HaTorah has branches throughout the United States and around the world but has achieved perhaps its greatest success in Los Angeles, where Douglas is one of its best-known adherents.

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Douglas in recent years has returned to the Orthodox Judaism he learned as a boy, and recently contributed $2 million to the organization, according to Israeli media reports.

The 80-year-old actor was born Issur Danielovitch, the son of illiterate Russian immigrants. He has said in interviews that he began to rediscover his faith after a 1991 air crash that killed two other men and left him seriously injured.

“I see that no matter how far I ran away from my Jewishness,” Douglas wrote in his recent book “Climbing the Mountain,” “it was always there. Like my shadow, I could not lose it.”

Aish HaTorah, founded in Jerusalem in 1974 by American-born Rabbi Noah Weinberg, seeks to return non-observant Jews to Orthodox Judaism. Its name means “Fire of the Torah.”

The organization’s headquarters in the Old City of Jerusalem include a seminary with classrooms overlooking the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest shrine.

“They’ve been able to bring Judaism to people who’ve been very much estranged from Jewish matters and are looking for a deeper meaning in their lives,” said Natan Ophir Offenbacher, an Orthodox rabbi affiliated with the Hecht Synagogue at Hebrew University.

Several observers questioned why so many prominent American political and entertainment figures would attend a function for a group they dismissed as a marginal organization.

Aish HaTorah “is not in the mainstream of Orthodox Judaism,” said Rabbi Yossi Goldman, who has followed the group in his capacity as director of the Hillel program for students at Hebrew University.

“I consider it more of a fringe group, not following the modern Orthodox approach at all. It’s intriguing that they’ve been able to attract such a following in Hollywood.”

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Co-chairs of the dinner--held at the home of Merv Adelson, the founder of Lorimar Pictures--were Jeffrey Katzenberg, Larry King, Michael Ovitz and Lew Wasserman, according to the Jewish Journal and Israeli reports.

Douglas was to be honored with Aish HaTorah’s King David award. Previous recipients include Ronald Reagan and Steven Spielberg.

Janet Aviad, a former lecturer on the sociology of religion at the Hebrew University who wrote a book about Jewish outreach organizations, said the group is a “breakaway, cult-like movement.”

“It aims at bringing people quick answers to difficult questions,” she said.

But even those who disagree with the organization’s approach admire its success in reaching disaffected Jews.

“I have to say their techniques bother me,” one Conservative rabbi said. “It’s the Jewish equivalent of fundamentalist Christian groups, out on the periphery of the Jewish community. But it’s a very smooth operation, appealing to young Jews who have been robbed of any Jewish education or background.”

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Times religion writer Larry Stammer contributed to this story. Trounson reported from Jerusalem and Tobar reported from Los Angeles.