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Newsletter : 9fax0519.txt
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>JN May 19, 1999, Vol. 7, No. 94
Obituary - Geoffrey Wigoder
By IsraelWire
Geoffrey Wigoder, veteran broadcaster, scholar and a leading editor of the Encyclopedia Judaica, died April 9 of a brain hemorrhage after a fall. He was 76. In the early 1950s, Wigoder directed the overseas broadcasts of Israel radio and in the 1970s was a correspondent for the BBC. He collaborated with Cecil Roth on what was to be the 16-volume Encyclopedia Judaica. When Roth died in 1970, Wigoder took over as editor.
Barak Starts to Build Coalition
By David Gollust (VOA-Jerusalem)
A day after his resounding victory over Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli
Prime Minister-Elect Ehud Barak faces the task of forming a
coalition government in a new parliament crowded with minor
parties.
Barak says uniting Israel after the divisive Netanyahu years is his
top priority. And although not an observant Jew, he paid a visit
to Jerusalem's Western Wall -- the holiest site in Judaism -- hours
after his victory in a gesture to Israel's religious community
which largely supported his opponent.
The Labor party leader is beginning the task of forming a majority
coalition in parliament that aides say will focus on left and
centrist factions but could include religious parties.
Knesset member and Barak adviser Yossi Beilin says Barak wants a
broad coalition, that would exclude only those who oppose peace
with the Palestinians. "All those parties which reject the Oslo
process by definition cannot be part of our coalition. But on
the contrary, those who agree with it, those who believe in peace,
those who believe that in order to have peace you have to pay a
price because eventually you are the winner -- those parties will
be part of our coalition."
Barak also visited the grave of his former mentor and military
colleague, the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was
assassinated in 1995.
At a victory rally in Tel Aviv early Tuesday, Barak pledged to
carry on Rabin's legacy by seeking peace with security for Israelis
-- under tough guidelines that include no concessions on Israel's
control of Jerusalem and no return to Israel's 1967 borders.
Barak has 45 days to form coalition in a new Knesset that will be
the most fractious in Israel's history with 15 different parties
winning seats in the 120-member parliament.
New York State High Court Rules Against Satmar Hasidim
By IsraelWire
New York State's highest court, the Court of Appeals, ruled the Kiryas Joel School District, in upstate New York, is in violation of the Constitution.
In a 4-3 decision, Judge George Bundy wrote that the latest law
"has the primary effect of advancing one religion over others and
constitutes an impermissible religious accommodation." The three
Judges in the minority dissented, saying the latest law, created in
1997 by the legislature and Governor George Pataki, had removed the
constitutional problems of earlier versions and was now acceptable.
Kiryas Joel is a community of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Orange County,
about 45 miles northwest of New York City. The village was founded
in 1976 by the late Grand Rebbe of Satmar, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum,
as an isolated safe haven for the Satmar Hasidim.
The Satmar village is home to just over 2,000 families. Local
Yeshiva and girls' school enroll more than 4,500 students. In the
late 1980s, its leaders first asked the legislature to create a
special school district so its disabled children could be educated
in their own schools rather than in the nearby Monroe Woodbury
school district. Parents of the disabled and community leaders said
the children did better in a Hasidic setting.
Immediately after the new law, sponsored by than-State Senator from
Poughkeepsie and now Governor Pataki, was signed by than-Gov. Mario
Cuomo, the state School Boards Association, lead by Louis Grumet,
attacked the district as an illegal accommodation for the benefit
of the religious Kiryas Joel community and no others. Eventually,
both the Court of Appeals and the US Supreme Court agreed.
Relying upon hints in the Supreme Court's decision that minor
corrections to the wording of the law might well solve the
constitutional challenge, the state legislature easily passed a new
law, renewing the school district.
In fall 1994, the residents of Kiryas Joel, in a special election,
approved the new district with an astonishing 90% - 10% (2970-334)
vote. That extraordinary show of solidarity was the highest
election turnout in village history. Opponents of the district went
right back to court, and through a 2-3 year period in the courts,
Kiryas Joel was, in most cases, defeated.
Eventually, the case went from court to superior court in the legal
echelon. The ruling was the fatal blow the Kiryas Joel School
District, experts say, since it is mostly unlikely that the Supreme
Court will take the case again, after it already ruled on it five
years ago.
