Roundup

Letters For Gilad
NEW YORK (JTA) -- A
global campaign to
send birthday greet-
ings to captive Israeli
soldier Gilad Shalit was
launched Friday.
The Conference of
Gilad Shalit
Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations is ask-
ing people to send greetings to Shalit
for his 24th birthday on Aug. 28. The
greetings will be presented to national
Red Cross affiliates to be passed on to
the International Committee of the Red
Cross for delivery to Shalit.
Shalit, who was taken captive in a
cross-border raid more than four years
ago, is presumed held in Gaza by captors
who have not allowed him any visits by
the Red Cross or any other humanitarian
group. After Sukkot, the Conference of
Presidents said, it will make a symbolic
presentation to the Red Cross asking
it to intercede with Hamas and allow a
humanitarian visit.
Supporters may send Shalit birthday
greetings through Giladgreetings.org.
A billboard calling for Shalit's release
will be put up in Times Square in New
York for the week before Rosh Hashanah,
which begins on Sept. 8, the Conference
of Presidents said.

Stoudemire:
'Practicing Jew'
NEW YORK (JTA) --
Amare Stoudemire of
the New York Knicks
reportedly said he is a
practicing Jew "spiritu-
ally and culturally."
Amare
Stoudemire, who last
Stoudemire
month visited Israel on
a spiritual journey to explore his Jewish
roots, made the comments in an inter-
view with Page Six of the New York Post.
He also said that he is keeping kosher.
The NBA All-Star joined the Knicks
this summer as a free agent. He formerly
played for the Phoenix Suns. Stoudemire
reportedly decided to visit Israel after
learning that his mother was Jewish.
Stoudemire told the newspaper that he
is continuing his Jewish studies. "I figure,
what the scriptures speak about, that's
what I celebrate:' he said.
He has reportedly been studying the
Bible since he was young.
Some have suggested that Stoudemire
is exploring Judaism as a way to help the
Knicks sell more tickets, a charge that the
star player denies.
Stoudemire told Page Six that he will
celebrate the High Holidays, but will not
miss any games for Rosh Hashanah and

10 August 26* 2010

JN

Yom Kippur. "Playing the games are my
livelihood:' he said. "But I'm still going to
celebrate the holidays."

NBA Stars
Visiting Israel
JERUSALEM (JTA)
-- NBA All-Star Dwight
Howard will visit Israel
to hold a basketball
clinic for teens.
Howard, of the
Dwight
Orlando
Magic, and
Howard
several former NBA
All-Stars also will scrimmage against
the Maccabi Haifa professional basket-
ball team of the Israeli Basketball Super
League.
The group of current and former
professional basketball players from
the United States will visit Israel from
Aug. 28 to Sept. 5, "to demonstrate their
solidarity with the people and State of
Israel," according to a news release from
SportsPower International, a nonprofit
that uses current and former NBA play-
ers as inspiring role models to make a
positive impact on international youth.
Howard will conduct a basketball
workshop and training session for teens
on Sept. 4. Later that day, Maccabi Haifa
will scrimmage against a team of for-
mer NBA All-Stars, including Jerome
Williams, Anthony Bonner, Paul Grant,
David Wood and Laron Profit. The All-
Star team will be coached by Dwight
Howard's father, Dwight Howard Sr.
"With the arrival of superstars the
likes of Dwight Howard to host a clinic
for teens for such a worthy cause and for
our Maccabi Haifa team to scrimmage
against former-NBA stars, we are more
than happy to rearrange our preseason
schedule:' said Maccabi Haifa's vice
chairman, Arnon Shiran.
Maccabi Haifa will travel to the United
States to play the New Jersey Nets in its
first preseason game at the Prudential
Center in Newark, N.J., on Oct. 3.

Transparency Sought
In Mosque Dispute
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Nancy Pelosi
called on the group planning an Islamic
center near Ground Zero to reveal its
funders, but said the mosque's opponents
should do the same.
The speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives weighed in Aug. 18
on the controversy over the proposed
mosque in lower Manhattan. She echoed
statements from President Obama that
freedom of religion is paramount, but
said that the decision about the planned
mosque is a local matter.
"The freedom of religion is a constitu-

tional right:' Pelosi said in a statement.
"Where a place of worship is located is a
local decision."
New York City authorities, including
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have support-
ed the mosque and community center,
planned for a rundown area within three
blocks of the World Trade Center felled in
the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
Polling shows most Americans oppose
the planned mosque, which also will
serve as an interfaith center. A vocal
opposition group has garnered the sup-
port of much of the Republican leader-
ship, who have made the mosque an
issue in the November midterm elections.
The Anti-Defamation League earlier
this month issued a statement decry-
ing mosque opponents who have made
bigoted statements, but also called on the
center's organizers to respect the sensi-
bilities of 9-11 victims and build it else-
where. The ADL also called for the orga-
nization behind the planned mosque,
the Cordoba Initiative, to release a list of
donors, apparently heeding allegations
by mosque opponents that its leaders
in the past have consorted with Islamic
radicals.
Pelosi used a statement from the
Interfaith Alliance, a religious free-
dom group that includes a number of
prominent rabbis on its board, calling for
transparency regarding the Islamic cen-
ter's funders. Pelosi quoted this sentence
from the Interfaith Alliance statement:
"We agree with the ADL that there is
a need for transparency about who is
funding the effort to build this Islamic
center. At the same time, we should also
ask who is funding the attacks against
the construction of the center?"
The entire Alliance statement
expressed disappointment in the ADL. "It
is unfair to prejudge the impact this cen-
ter can have on reconciliation before it is
even built:' it said. "And we must remem-
ber that just because someone prays in
a mosque, that does not make them any
less of a citizen than you or me."
It was not clear from her statement
whether Pelosi endorsed the entire
Alliance statement.
Abraham Foxman, the ADL's national
director, said he appreciated Pelosi's sup-
port for transparency, but regretted the
politicization of the issue.

Israeli Economy Grows
NEW YORK (JTA) -- Israeli economic
growth unexpectedly accelerated to its
fastest pace in more than two years.
Exports and consumer spending
increased, helping to speed growth in the
second quarter by an annualized 4.7 per-
cent, Bloomberg reported.

The expansion rate rose from a revised
3.6 percent in the first quarter, said
the Jerusalem-based Central Bureau of
Statistics.
The median forecast of six economists
surveyed by Bloomberg had predicted
growth of 2.9 percent. The statistics
bureau reported last month that the
economy grew a preliminary 3.4 percent
in the first three months.
"This is really an economy running
on all pistons:' said Jonathan Katz, a
Jerusalem-based economist for HSBC
Holdings PLC, who forecast 3.7 percent
growth. "Down the road, the Bank of
Israel will have to increase interest rates.
This is clear to them, clear to everyone,
and the pace may surprise many."
The Israeli economy's rebound from
the global financial crisis has been pow-
ered by exports, which make up nearly
half of gross domestic product.

Historian
Tony Judt
New York/JTA —
History scholar and
writer Tony Judt, a vocal
critic of Israel after hav-
ing lived there, has died.
Judt, who had ALS
Tony Judt
(amyotrophic lat-
eral sclerosis), or Lou
Gehrig's disease, died Aug. 6, 2010, at his
home in New York, New York University
announced. He was 62.
Judt, a London native, had been a
professor at NYU since 1987. He was
nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his
2005 book Postwar: A History of Europe
Since 1945, a 900-page history of modern
Europe.
He wrote essays for the New York
Review of Books, as well as the New
Republic, the Times Literary Supplement
and the London Review of Books, several
in recent years critical of Israel.
A recent series of essays dealt with liv-
ing with ALS. Judt, a onetime Zionist who
while living in Israel served as a transla-
tor for the Israel Defense Forces during
and after the Six-Day War in 1967, wrote
an essay in 2003 calling for a one-state
solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of
the New Republic, said in 2006 that Judt
"has become precisely the kind of intel-
lectual whom his intellectual heroes
would have despised."
Judt, in response, reportedly said, "Oh,
that's nuts. The issue is not whether
Israel has a right to exist. The question
is what kind of a state Israel should be.
That's all:'

