I
Community Views
Editor's Notebook
How Do You Say
`Compromise' In Arabic?
Healing Time
For Home
LEONARD FEIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
In Israel, recent-
ly, I learned the
meaning of a sto-
ry that I've been
telling for many
years. The story
is simple: Haim
Nachman Bialik,
the poet of the
Hebrew renais-
sance, used to say, "I yearn for
the day when there will be in
[then] Palestine a Jewish jail,
with a Jewish guard on the out-
side and a Jewish prisoner on
the inside."
That's the whole of it. I've told
the story as 'an example of the
yearning for the normalization
of the Jewish condition, of the
widespread desire that we be-
come a goy k'cholhagcryim, a na-
tion like all the other nations,
relieved at last of the need to
meet a higher standard. (And
I'd often added that Mr. Bialik
surely had not foreseen a day
when Israel's jails would be
overcrowded.)
Not a bad story to illustrate
the pull of normalization. But,
it turns out, that's like using an
eight-cylinder story to make a
two-cylinder point — as I
learned in the course of a long
; conversation with a leading
Palestinian intellectual, a man
widely known and highly re-
garded by virtually all who
know something of the Pales-
tinian community.
I had sought him out in the
wake of a sobering session with
several members of the Pales-
tinian negotiating team, a meet-
ing to which I'd been invited by
• Israeli friends who periodically
touch base with the Palestini-
ans, try to understand their
• thinking and, where appropri-
ate, to challenge it.
These meetings are private,
so I will not go into the details
of the exchange. But I am free
to report on the core disagree-
ment, which was implicit in the
\ detailed discussion and, before
/ we were done, moved from the
implicit to the explicit.
This is, the Israelis said, an
historic moment. If you grab it,
and accept the limited autono-
my promised in the interim
phase, you will have entered
into a dynamic that will move
you inexorably to independence
— to self-determination, if you
will.
In that sense, the Israeli right
is entirely correct in its opposi-
\>. tion to the peace process. The
right's bottom line is that there
shall never be a Palestinian
state. Your bottom line, on the
• other hand, is that you will set-
• tle for nothing less. But do not
)1 Leonard Fein is a commen-
tator on Jewish issues who
lives in Boston.
suppose that you can get from
here to there in one giant leap.
The authors of the Camp
David agreement were wise;
there must be an interim phase.
Among other reasons, the Is-
raeli public must get used to the
idea of Palestinian autonomy.
There needs to be some evidence
that it can work, there needs to
be a period of confidence-build-
ing.
To which the Palestinian re-
sponse, in its details and in its
most general articulation, was
negative. The kind of limited au-
tonomy now on the table is an
offense against Palestinian
pride, a confirmation of Israel's
right to shape Palestinian des-
tiny, quite possibly a trap.
It could well lead nowhere,
leaving the Palestinians with a
kind of Potemkin independence,
a few of the outward trappings
in place but the heart of inde-
pendence still clutched in the Is-
raeli fist.
The meeting was, as I have
said, depressing. If this was an
honest assessment of the Pales-
tinians' perceptions, there was
little room for optimism re-
garding the negotiations.
Unlike the
Palestinians, Jews
were willing to
create a new state
incrementally.
I fully shared the grim as-
sessment of the Israelis as we
left the meeting. And it was for
that reason that I met, several
days later, with a Palestinian
intellectual who is close to the
negotiating team and from
whom I thought I might glean
a word or two that would make
PHIL JACOBS EDITOR
some space for hope.
No such luck. Indeed, his as-
sessment was even more dour
than that of his friends on the
negotiating team.
"We need," he said, "a grand
gesture. Instead, we are being
nickled and dimed, bargained
with as if this were some kind
of market. We are a proud peo-
ple, but we are treated as if we
were schoolchildren."
But look, I countered, is it not
so that if once you start down
the road, new possibilities arise?
Can you not see that there's a
process here, and not merely a
new way of freezing the status
quo?
Does it not matter that you
are being offered full control of
your health-care system, that
you are being offered your own
police force?
No, he replied, none of that
matters. Even now, we control
70 percent of our health-care
system. Thirty percent more or
less is not what these negotia-
tions are supposed to be about.
And police? Let the Jews con-
tinue to arrest us. What differ-
ence does it make? We are used
to the way it is, and what's be-
ing offered is not so big a change
as to induce us to be agreeable.
I know that there are other
factors, that there is Hamas and
that there is Tunis and so forth
and so on, that the Palestinian
assessment is not only existen-
tial but also pragmatic. And I
do not know how the diverse el-
ements that go into the assess-
ment or weighted. I know even
that what we were told may be
only a cover story, an effort to
avoid confessing political impo-
tence. .
But I saw not a glimmer of
appreciation for Bialik's wis-
dom, and I came away fearing
that once again, Abba Eban has
been proved right:
`The Palestinians," Mr. Eban
has often said, "never miss a
chance to lose an opportunity." ❑
"State Slaps
Borman Hall,"
"Code Blue For
Borman Hall?,"
"JHA's Fate,"
"All Is Not Well
On The Home
Front."
New news?
Hardly. These
are among the many headlines
of stories Jewish News re-
porters have written in recent
years concerning the Jewish
Federation's involvement in
nursing home care. There have
been few, if any, stories pro-
jecting a bright future for the
Jewish Home for Aged.
In the past few months, the
very survival of the Home has
been debated. If not for a $4.5
million Federation bailout over
the last few years, there would
be no more Home.
In the past three years,
there have been at least four
new executive directors of the
Jewish Home for Aged.
They've been replaced almost
as quickly as baseball teams
replace their managers.
Recently, we've been getting
phone calls, though not many,
and letters, though not many,
from disgruntled relatives of
residents and every once in a
while from an anonymous em-
ployee.
Let's go over a few issues
here, in no particular order.
First, Borman Hall was in se-
rious danger of being closed, if
not by Federation then by state
licensing inspectors. Borman
Hall is in such a delicate situ-
ation it could still close down.
Two years ago, Federation
stepped into the management
of Borman Hall because it was
consistently requiring hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars
of communal allocations above
and beyond its budget.
There were claims of mis-
management by relatives.
Meanwhile, many of these
same relatives placed their
loved ones in the Home after
the elderly person's monies
had been spent down in some
way to the $2,500 Medicaid as-
sets requirement. The Home
was receiving more and more
Medicaid clients instead of pri-
vate-pay clients.
Also, there was a complaint
that past boards and profes-
sional staff spent too much of
their time managing and not
enough time getting to know
residents as well as front-line
staffers.
Finally, there were those
who felt that if the Home
closed tomorrow, there were
enough private places in the
community with a Jewish base
that could take care of these
clients.
Enough.
At least for now.
When Denise Bortolani-
Rabidoux, the current direc-
tor, walks through the
corridors of Borman, there's
a simple and obvious differ-
ence. She knows the names
of the employees and she
knows the names of the res-
idents. When a resident is
slumped over in a wheel-
chair, the director straight-
ens the person into a more
comfortable position. This
happens not when the cam-
eras or the reporters are in
place, but when the mo-
ments are quiet or when
they are hectic.
The truth is, Ms. Bor-
tolani-Rabidoux does not
have time to glad-hand
everyone in sight or work the
political angles. She needs to
put Borman Hall in a posi-
tion where it is operating at
budget. There is no more
The Home needs
space to heal and
time to do it in.
bail- out money. There are
going to be changes in
staffing; some hours might
get cut back; some feelings
hurt. When the dust settles
some eight months from
now, the Home will be either
open or closed.
It will only remain open ff
we give Ms. Bortolani-Ra-
bidoux a chance to keep it
open. There's got to be a dif-
ferent mentality now. The
goal is the best care possible
for our Jewish elderly. But
we've got to get out of the
habit of making so much
noise that it distracts from
the day-to-day goals. We'll
all be better off if we realize
that the goals of the Home's
administration are the same
as those of the residents,
their relatives and the em-
ployees.
The Home needs space to
heal and time to do it in.
Federation officials have
openly said that this might
be the Home's last chance to
survive. We need this facil-
ity; we owe it to our elderly
and to ourselves.
But as community mem-
bers, we have to get off the
backs of the professional
staff and let them work the
Home into a vital future. If
we don't, there'll be no place
for many of our elderly and
future generations to call
Home. El