Page2-The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, November 8, 1984
M-T
World-
RABBI W.
GUNTHER PLAUT
Toronto plays host next week to the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations, the "trade association" of the hundreds of community federations and welfare funds in North America.
Many years ago, when I was still living in the United States, I made a point of attending the annual General Assembly. Concern for Israel had just moved into the centre of Jewish attention and the GA gave expression to this pervasive preoccupation.
The perception was relatively simple. Federations   were   the RabbiPlaut
instruments for raising conrimunity dollars which were primarily going to Israel and the Assembly brought all the ftmd raisers together. It was a convention like many others, with very particular and relatively narrowly focused purposes.
But that all has changed. The federations in every city across North America are now far more than fund raising instruments. What fund raising is done now goes in equal and sometimes major measure for Jewish education and other local concerns.
With this shift hasalsocome a shift of interest: participants repreisent the whole range of communal concerns: where yesterday they worried about the quantity of funds they now worry as much about the quality of Jewish life. Where yesterday they heard generals and politicians from Israel as their main stars and admired successful fund raisers as their great teachers, they now listen, in addition, to rabbis, philosophers and social scientists. They observe the Sabbath together (I will be their Shabbat preacher this year) and think about the quality of Jewish education and the rising: incidents of mixed marriage and assimilation.
The General Assembly has thus become a North American community forum, and riot surpf-isihg-ly Toronto and Montreal have recently been the loci where these concerns have found their public and common expression.
As of this writing (in October, in New York) I do not know the program of the Assembly, but I know that it will encompass many aspects of Jewish existence that are implortant to Canadians and Americans.
I look put of the window here and by craning my neck I can just see the blue sky that hovers over the east coast's Indian summer. Masses of human beings stream by below, many of our people amongst them, I am wondering what concerns them at the core of their lives and whether being Jewish makes a real difference to them — or whether this difference is expressed mainly through their fear of anti-semitism and their dislike for Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan.
I am thinking also that these things are probably little different in Canada — only the numbers are smaller and the pace fortunately less hectic.
We are still in the middle of the holiday period and I write this and I am wondering, as I do every year, whether the message of this whole season will have a lasting effect on our people. But then, a great convention comes to town and brings men and women from every corner Of the continent — and I am heartened, Yes, they still care and it is with this sentiment that I extend to our visitors during the week of the General Assembly a hearty shalom.
Private group works on projects
This week's reading from the Torah continues the story of Abraham and Sarah with the birth of Isaac arid the subsequent banishment of Abraham's concubine Hagar and their son Ishmael.
It concludes with the Ak-kedah, the description of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice even his son at" God's command. This pas-
sage is part of the Yom Kippur liturgy.
Read this parsha, Vayera (Genesis 12-17), Friday, Nov. 9, and the haftorah, Isaiah 40:27-41:16, on the Sabbath. -
During the—rest of the week, continue reading Psalms: 101 on Thursday, Nov. 8; 102 on Sunday; "and one a day from then on.
Peres okam
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WOLFBLITZER
WASHINGTON -
American Jewish members of the "Business Group for Middle East Peace and Development" have confirmed that Prime Minister Shimon Peres quietly gave them die green light to promote the establishment of a development bank on the W^t Bank arid other projects aimed at improving the quality for Palestinians living, there.
They said Peres had also authorized that the group undertake some new initiatives aimed at advancing the overall Arab^Israeli peace process.
The private group, organized by Prof. Steye Cohen of Queeris College in New York, includes some of the wealthiest and most politically active American Jews and American Arabs. All are American citizens.
The s^te department as well as Jordan's King Hussein are also known to have quietly endorsed the concept.
Among the Jews in the groiip are Lester Crown of Chicag;o, the chief ex^ ecutive of General Dynamics; Jay Pritzker of Chicago, the owner of the Hyatt hotel chain; New York banker Steve Shiilom; businessmen Robert Arnow, Robert Steinberg and Larry TIsch of New York; and Henry Kaufman, the in-nuential Wall St. economist.
Other Jews include Washington attorney Alfred Moses; former B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League executive director Arnold Forster; American Jewish Congress President Howard Squadron; and former World Jewish Cong^^ Presidimt Philip Klutznick.
There is an equally impressive; group of Arab Americans in the group, including former Pan Am Airlines president Najeeb Halaby, who is King Hus-sein^s father-in-law; Bill Baroody, the head of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington; and Zahi Khourl and Joe Jacobs, both extreniely wealthy businessmen.
Behind the scenes, several prominent American statesmen, including former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Middle East negotiator Philip Habib, have also endorsed the operation which is aimed in part at improving the standards of living on the West Bank,
The concept is that peo-, pie who have "something to lose" will noterigage in terrorism.
The group is also attempting to encourage King Hussein and other Arabs to join the peace process with Israel.
Well-informed sources said that while Hussein privately supports the group, he is taking an extremely low profile out of fear of angering radical Arabs.
The long-standing proposal for the West Bank Development Bank was opposed by the former Likud-led government.
But Peresj backed by Defence Mbiister Yitzhak Rabbi, has changed the Israeli attitude, in part ui order to demonstrate to Secretary of State George Shultz that Israel, top, wants to improve the quality of life on the West Bank.
Peres's position has reportedly angered Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir and other Likud partners in the national unity government. They are said to fear that he may be going too far in liberalizing Israel's West Bank policies,.
As a result, word of Peres's meetings in Ne^y York with the business group has caused an uproar in Israel.
The Prime Minister came to Washington with a whole list of restrictions on the West Bank which had been lifted in recent days, The Americans, especially ShultZi warmly Welcomed that shift:
Beyond accepting the notion of the new bank on the West Bank, the Israeli leader informed Shultz that Israel's military gdverri-ment would also permit new industrialization projects, the establishment of more hospitals and other social services and the reopening of the universities.
Palestinians returning to the West Bank would be
permitted to bring $5,000 with them rather than the former sum of $3,500.
The Prime Miriister promised to allow most of the West Bank towns and villages to again have Palestiniian mayors, rather than Israeli civilian administrators as has been the case in recent years.
Peres secretly met with Jewish and Arab members of the private business group during his recent visit to New York; Among those attending the session was Halaby.
A delegation of five well known West Bankers involved in quietly cooperating with the scheme came to New York and Washington earlier in October, having obtained travel permits from  .   the Israeli
government.
*     * *
According to informed sources, U.S., Israeli and Jordanian officials agree that this business group, composed of private American citizens, may be able to undertake certain delicate diplomatic responsibilities which none of the governments is yet prepared to do.
In the short run, Jewish members of the group, backed by the Israeli governments, also want to promote the establishment of a new and
independent West Bank political leadership which would not necessarily take its cue from the PLO.
But the entire project is still extremely sensitive and controversial. Individuals involved in promoting it have refused to address the matter publicly, preferring instead to speak about it only privately. They clearly fear that too much pub-lic discussion could undermine its overall effectiveness/
Meanwhile, there' s another committee involving Israel that is gearirig up for some major activity.
The newly-formed U.S.-Israeli joint economic committee is expected to open its meetings shortly, hoping to reach some specific conclusions about improv-irig the Israeli economy by January.
U.S. and Israeli officials involved in preparing for this first session in Washington said the group will primarily atttempt to focus on long-term ways to improve Israeli productivity, reform some longstanding structural problems in the Israeli economy and increase exports. .
They said the Israeli delegation will be led by Emmanuel Sharon, director-general of the finance ministry. The U.S.
team will be chaired by Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Allen Wallis.
The joint committee, formally established during Prime Minister Peres's recent summit with President Reagan at the White House, will also explore Israel's more immediate short-term problems, including any possible strain in meeting Israel's current debt commitments;
U.S. and Israeli officials in Washington said there was no need right now for Israel to seek any deferment on the repayment of its approximately $10 billion debt to the United States. They noted, however, that such an option was still open to Israel down the road (CJN Oct. 25).
U.S. officials, including Secretary Shultz, have not been arixious to see Israel exercise that option because it would merely increase Israel's overall debt burden to the United States. Any postponed payment would require additional Interest payments at the going commercial rates. •
Thus, the Americans welcomed Peres's recent statement in the Knesset that Israel would continue to make its payments on time.
time,
By
ELLEN GOODMAN
BOSTON -
Forgive me if f do not herald a "new era in communications." The announcement was made re eently that airplanes are now being equipped with pay phones. But this time I'll forego the fanfare, pass up the paean to progress. The ability to reach out and touch someone 35,000 feet below doesn't warm the cockles of my telephone-aversive heart.
Like every red-blooded American, I too went through an Alexander Graham Bell period. There were several years during adolescence when my left ear was continually warm, when my parents had to follow the path of the black cord, like crumbs in the forest, in order to find their lostchild. I spent enough time huddled iri closets with a phone to have grown mushrooms on my kneecaps.
Now I am convinced diatthe Anierican populace is divided into two groups: those who are and those who are not able to sever the telephone cord. One of the most serious, unreported, disabling, antisocial diseases in America today is that of telephone addiction.
A telephone addict is defined as a citizen who cannot be away from a phone for more than three hours without suffering anxiety tremors.
The telltale signs of telephone addiction are found In the answers to these questions: (1) Can you spend an entire day without making a single call? (2) Can you unload the dishwasher or the groceries without talking on the phone? (3) Are you more likely to phone when you are alone? (4) If you were being proposed to on one line, could you ignore the call on tjie other line?
A majority of Americans have been programmed to believe that they absolutely must pick up the phone, if only to make it stop ringing. Pavlov's dog salivated; we reach. The results of this are appalling. Consider how many babies have been dropped, blouses hurried, dinners ruined and trains of thought derailed by the telephone.
The same instrument has had a dismal effect on personal relationshps. Every day, millions of people interrupt a conversation with someone in the same room, out of a compulsion to respond to someione on another street or in another state. Ev-
ery day, men and women are put to the crucial test of sexual compatibility: Do you believe in practicing telephonus interruptus?
It must be said that the telephone purveyors bear a grave responsibility for the rapid growth of addiction in North America. Most of the so-called improvements, advances, progress in technology have been directed at the hard-core user, or shall we say abuser.
Think for a minute of how the pushers have en-cduraged this habit. We now have conference calls and video-telephones. We have phones that involve no hands. We have phones that can be programmed so that they will track us down at another location. We even have jwrtable pet phones that will follow us wherever we go, heeling on command.
As the pushers know, abuse is at its absolute peak among the overachievers, the high flyers, the Type AT&Ts who must feel indispensable, in control at all times. It is these souls who use the telephones in the fancy hotel bathrooms. It is these people who talk into receivers at restaurant tables. It is these people who have phones put in their cars. Indeed there are some frequent phoners who log enough long-distance miles a week to win a trip to Singapore.
Until now, there was one remaining telephone-free environment: the airpjane. The Transcontinental 101 Is, DC-10s, and 727s acted as detoxification centres for people trying to take the cure. Yes, some abusers broke down 35,000 feet above Illinois, and were found sweating and reciting their credit card number over and over.
But there were the success .stories ^ men and women who learned what life was like without a ringing in their ears. Men and women who communicated person-to-person With their seatmates. -Men and women who read, and watched the clouds go by. ■        „ .....
Now even this refuge has been violated. Today you can make calls from selected airplanes; tomorrow you can receive calls on these airplanes. What will become of those of us who do not want our air space violated by the side effects of this ugly addiction? The need is great, the time is now: Fellow flyers, unite in behalf of a Non-Phoners' Section!
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