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Three days of 'learning, dating and debating'
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UJC Washington 14 conference attracts 1,800 young Jewish leaders.
By: DOUGLAS J. GUTH Staff Reporter
Saturday, March 20, 10:30 p.m., somewhere over Washington, D.C.
The half-full Boeing 737 cuts through nighttime cloud cover at about 15,000 ft. over our nation's capital. Somewhere below, nearly 2,000 young Jews are undoubtedly enjoying themselves at a kickoff event for the Washington 14 Young Leadership Conference, a biennial event held by the United Jewish Communities (UJC) National Young Leadership Cabinet.
The "Spirit of Saturday Night" party is the opening salvo of three intense days of "learning, debating and dating" at the Washington Hilton and Towers. Young Jewish leaders, most of them ages 25 to 45, have come from the U.S., Canada, Israel and points beyond to attend the event.
This year's theme is "We Can Make A Difference," underscoring the power of the next generation of Jewish leaders to practice tikkun olam - repair of the world - starting at the community level. Conference programming includes workshops, talks and interactive breakout sessions on a variety of topics, as well as a chance to lobby for Jewish causes in front of our representatives on Capitol Hill.
Saturday night is designed to be a fun precursor to all this serious business, and I am looking forward to meeting my fellow Clevelanders for some pre-conference revelry. Unfortunately, I am bumped from my early evening flight at Hopkins and have to grab a connecting flight in Philadelphia.
A cab drops me off at my hotel around midnight. The Hilton is directly across the street from the Marriott where I'm staying. I can see throngs of people congregating in the Hilton lobby, but I have no plans to join them. It's late, and I'm scruffy and unshaven.
My resolve evaporates after about five minutes, and I reluctantly stroll over to the Hilton. The lobby is a cauldron of noise where the "dating" portion of the event seems to be in full swing: People of both sexes "on the prowl," dressed (and overdressed) in sports jackets and ties for men, expensive-looking suits for women, everyone holding a tumbler full of something.
I skirt the crowd, feeling like an interloper among the beautiful people, and I leave after three minutes, all the while silently cursing Continental Airlines.
Sunday, March 21
Most of the talks and breakout sessions take place in a series of meeting rooms. The hub of all this activity is a spacious, carpeted registration room where people congregate between sessions and eat overpriced cafeteria food. Uniformed security personnel are posted here and throughout the hotel. Hebrew-speaking guards check name tags at an escalator, and a mean-looking cop coaxes a presumably bomb-sniffing Labrador retriever through the registration room.
Welcome to post-9/11 Washington, D.C.
Hannah Yecheskel, an eye doctor from the area, is not deterred by these precautions. This is her second Washington conference, and she views the program as part of her continuing "spiritual and political education."
One of the recurring themes of the conference is supporting Israel with your presence, not just your checkbook. The dark-haired Yecheskel is half-Israeli, and considers Judaism and Israel one and the same. "If you haven't been to Israel, this (conference) is a very good steppingstone" toward making the trip, she says.
The conference also allows for plenty of tikkun olam opportunities. Attendees can sponsor a Passover seder and personalize Passover greeting cards for needy Jewish families in Argentina, the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Poland or Israel. They can also write letters to U.S. and Israeli soldiers and to members of Congress, or list themselves in Gift of Life, an organization that facilitates bone-marrow transplants for patients by increasing the representation of Jewish people in the bone-marrow donor pool.
After an orientation and an hour of downtime, attendees pour into the Hilton's enormous International Ballroom for the Washington 14 opening plenary. Members of each city's delegation hold up signs to direct their fellow delegates to their seats. New Yorkers wear green foam Statue of Liberty crowns. Pittsburgh unfurls a long banner done up in Steelers' yellow and black. Atlanta members hoist signs embossed with pictures of peaches.
Amid the tumult, sign-holding Atlantan Debby Winston stands on a chair with her friend Shelly Schmahesser. Both are impressed by the sheer number of people gathered for the same cause. "You can't beat 1,800 Jews in a room," Winston enthuses.
The 26-member Cleveland delegation is seated near the front of the room. Howard Wolf, a business director at the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, holds up a black-and -red banner that says, "Cleveland Rocks," complete with a picture of a guitar.
"I didn't realize there were so many motivated young Jews," admits South Euclid attorney Jeremy Browner, 28. "We can be a true political force."
After three national anthems - U.S., Canada and Israel - the program begins. Washington 14 co-chairs Jonathan Mayer and Judith Sydney expound upon the conference's "We Can Make A Difference" theme, and UJC chair, Clevelander Bobby Goldberg, also says a few words.
The highlight of the plenary is cantankerous political humorist/author Al Franken. He gets some big laughs from the largely liberal crowd, as well as a few grumbles from the more conservative members of the audience.
Franken has few kind words for the Bush administration, but does give them a rather backhanded compliment for not planting weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after months of fruitless searching. "You know they thought about it," he quips.
Next, it's time to rush to the first series of breakout sessions. These range from heavier academic, social and political topics ("Civil Liberties and National Security, "Leadership in Times of Peril," "Messages from the Arab World - Overseas and at Home") to lighter fare on "Finding a Mate After 30" and "Jewish Expressions in Popular Culture."
I choose "Anti-Semitism in the United States," featuring a debate between Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt and radio talk-show host/author Dennis Prager. But Lipstadt, once sued for libel by Holocaust denier David Irving, was ill and could not attend.
Prager, described as "one of the three most interesting Jewish minds" by the New York Jewish Week, feels Jews should worry more about antisemitism coming from "the universities we historically venerate" than the backlash from Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."
In this post-9/11, post-intifada world, "the university is a moral wasteland," a place where anti-Israel sentiment, espoused by professors and parroted by impressionable students, is more prevalent than anywhere else in the country, he says.
The activist left is where the danger lies, not the Christian right, Prager insists. "It's time for Jews to grow up and smell the flowers of a truly decent society (conservative Christians) that loves Jews and wants that love reciprocated."
Instead of worrying about "The Passion," Jews should be "passionate" about going to Israel, "where it's a mitzvah just to go shopping," Prager remarks.
Despite its shortcomings, the U.S. is the best place in the world to be a Jew, he states. Arturo Arditti, a Jew from Mexico City, agrees. The 41-year-old architect grew up with "a spiritual link" to Israel and attends synagogue, but says Mexico City, which has about 40,000 Jews, is a place where he must be "inconspicuous" about his faith.
This is Arditti's third Washington conference. While a move to the U.S. might not be possible in the near future, "I always go home refueled and fulfilled, and I tell everyone I can about the experience," he says.
Meeting Jews from countries outside the U.S. and Israel and learning what makes them tick is refreshing. Nigel Savage, for example, was born in Manchester, England, and now lives in New York. He is founder of Hazon, a "radically inclusive" group of religious and secular, gay and straight Jews that holds annual "Jewish environmental bike rides" in the U.S. and Israel.
Hazon, a hebrew word for "vision," uses outdoor education "as a vibrant expression of Jewish life," says Savage, who is looking forward to an upcoming Israeli bike ride that starts in Jerusalem and ends in Eilat.
The Diaspora is well represented here, but Israel takes precedence. During a late-day breakout session, Jonny Alster, an IDF reservist, tells a hushed crowd about his experience in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002. An incursion in the camp resulted in the deaths of 23 Israeli soldiers, as well as accusations of human rights violations from pro-Palestinian groups.
In an emotional speech, Alster recalls how "insulted" and saddened he was after hearing claims of a massacre when he and his fellow soldiers took great care to avoid harming civilians (the charge was later disproven). He remembers debating the smallest moral issues, such as sitting in the kitchen of an abandoned Palestinian home in Jenin, wondering if it was ethical to take tea from someone's cupboard.
Alster, like many speakers at Washington 14, invites us to visit the Jewish state. "Israel needs American Jewry, and we have a lot to give," he says.
Dinner and an evening plenary are followed by a euphemistically named "community reception" that takes place throughout the hotel late into the night. A dry-erase board in the downstairs reception area promises all-night parties in the Chicago, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, New York and Miami suites. These get-togethers offer a college-like atmosphere of packed, smoky rooms where coeds concoct mixed drinks behind makeshift bars. I leave at 2 a.m. with the party still going strong. On my way out I hear one reveler tell his complaining friend, "Sleep when you get home, dude."
Monday, March 22
The morning's news demonstrates once again why we're here. Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin was killed overnight by missiles fired from an IDF assault helicopter. This could ratchet up violence against Israel and serve as another public relations nightmare for the Jewish state, we're told.
Meanwhile, I head to an 8 a.m. breakout session entitled "Gossip, Lies and Lessons." The speaker is author Lori Palatnik, a rabbi from Toronto. She warns of the dangers of lashon hora, giving advice on how to curb gossip and avoid others who spout it.
Palatnik loves the high-energy atmosphere of the conference, with the added bonus of hundreds of attractive singles to choose from. While she's avoided the parties ("I have five kids"), she has heard the stories of people finding their spouses during past events.
There's no shame if finding a mate is your sole reason for attending. "The greatest thing you can do for the Jewish people is to marry Jewish," Palatnik maintains.
Dan Nichols is happy, but not because he's found his soulmate. He's just a naturally happy guy jamming on an acoustic guitar at the entrance to the cafeteria during lunch. Nichols is the front man for Eighteen, a "Jewish modern rock band" that tours the country, including Cleveland.
When I meet the lanky Nashville resident, he's unselfconsciously singing a Hebrew song in a Ugandan dialect penned by Noam Katz. Nichols meets with plenty of smiles as he plays his guitar, and returns them with a smile of his own. Jewish music, he says, "helps me stay positive."
After lunch, we are back in the ballroom for that day's plenary. An entertaining and informative debate between CNN "Crossfire" co-host Paul Begala and National Review editor Kate O'Beirne is followed by a fiery speech by Ranaan Gissin, an advisor for Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Gissin knows his country is in for some rough times following the Yassin killing, but this shouldn't prevent attendees from supporting Israel. Gissin tells us of his service in the IDF many years ago, when soldiers walking through a dark alley would tap each other on their helmets to assure their "buddies" they were there.
Today, Israel is on the front line of a war, "but when you visit it is like you are tapping us on the helmet, and we know we are not alone," Gissin says to a standing ovation.
That night is UJC's "Never Say Dayenu" program, a somber, yet joyful event showing us where our Campaign for Jewish Needs dollars are going. In this vein we meet, among others, a young Israeli woman whose mother and handicapped sister were killed by a terrorist, and a Romanian boy who found his Jewish roots. We also meet Adam Mesh, better known as the "star" of the popular "Average Joe" reality TV show.
The night ends with songs as dozens of young delegates form a human chain and dance around the ballroom. Attendees also squeeze in one last night of partying before we "Take it to the Hill" the following morning.
Tuesday, March 23
Our last day in Washington is marked by clear blue skies and warmer temperatures. Today, we lobby our local senators and representatives on issues such as the Israel security fence, Medicaid, and homeland security assistance for Jewish institutions in the U.S.
The Cleveland delegation is shuffled onto buses bound for Capitol Hill soon after breakfast. This is our first real trip outside the hotel, and people are talkative and excited even after another long night of socializing.
Jeff Lynn, for one, is looking forward to this morning's event, which he calls "Hangover on the Hill." The good-humored podiatrist from University Heights is a little tired (he's gotten about eight hours of sleep over three nights), but that doesn't stop him from taking advantage of the conference's many "networking opportunities," i.e. collecting phone numbers from as many eligible young women as possible.
Jokes aside, it's been an enlightening trip for Lynn, who is impressed by the enthusiasm of so many people who care about Israel and are willing to spend their time and money to be here. Hopefully, "our strength in numbers" will bring "the Jewish voice" to those in power, he says.
The first stop for our Cleveland delegation is the office of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH), and the delegates laud her voting record for Israel. This meeting is followed by a sitdown with an aide to Dennis Kucinich (D-OH).
The next stop is the office of Republican Senator Mike DeWine, which we visit with our counterparts from Columbus and Cincinnati, about 85 of us in all. We are led by Joyce Garver Keller, executive director of the government affairs committee of Ohio Jewish Communities. Part of the group, meanwhile, goes to the Hart Senate Office Building to lobby Senator George Voinovich (R-OH).
After about 15 minutes, a slightly rumpled-looking DeWine arrives and thanks us for our vigilance. "I get 5,000 letters and e-mails a day," he says. "This is a good opportunity for (the Senate) to hear you directly."
Cincinnati native Adam Rosenberg, 25, shakes DeWine's hand and thanks him for his continuing support of the Jewish state. Rosenberg is the executive director of his Hamilton County Democratic delegation, but his political affiliation makes no difference here. "Today, I'm Adam the Jewish American, not Adam the Democrat," he says.
It's been a week since the trip, and Rosenberg feels like he's made "about 1,799 new friends," he tells me during a recent phone interview. He sees what's happening in the Middle East, in Mel Gibson's Hollywood and elsewhere, and "it makes me feel better to know there are 1,800 more people out there who know how to defend the state of Israel."
By: DOUGLAS J. GUTH Staff Reporter
Saturday, March 20, 10:30 p.m., somewhere over Washington, D.C.
The half-full Boeing 737 cuts through nighttime cloud cover at about 15,000 ft. over our nation's capital. Somewhere below, nearly 2,000 young Jews are undoubtedly enjoying themselves at a kickoff event for the Washington 14 Young Leadership Conference, a biennial event held by the United Jewish Communities (UJC) National Young Leadership Cabinet.
The "Spirit of Saturday Night" party is the opening salvo of three intense days of "learning, debating and dating" at the Washington Hilton and Towers. Young Jewish leaders, most of them ages 25 to 45, have come from the U.S., Canada, Israel and points beyond to attend the event.
This year's theme is "We Can Make A Difference," underscoring the power of the next generation of Jewish leaders to practice tikkun olam - repair of the world - starting at the community level. Conference programming includes workshops, talks and interactive breakout sessions on a variety of topics, as well as a chance to lobby for Jewish causes in front of our representatives on Capitol Hill.
Saturday night is designed to be a fun precursor to all this serious business, and I am looking forward to meeting my fellow Clevelanders for some pre-conference revelry. Unfortunately, I am bumped from my early evening flight at Hopkins and have to grab a connecting flight in Philadelphia.
A cab drops me off at my hotel around midnight. The Hilton is directly across the street from the Marriott where I'm staying. I can see throngs of people congregating in the Hilton lobby, but I have no plans to join them. It's late, and I'm scruffy and unshaven.
My resolve evaporates after about five minutes, and I reluctantly stroll over to the Hilton. The lobby is a cauldron of noise where the "dating" portion of the event seems to be in full swing: People of both sexes "on the prowl," dressed (and overdressed) in sports jackets and ties for men, expensive-looking suits for women, everyone holding a tumbler full of something.
I skirt the crowd, feeling like an interloper among the beautiful people, and I leave after three minutes, all the while silently cursing Continental Airlines.
Sunday, March 21
Most of the talks and breakout sessions take place in a series of meeting rooms. The hub of all this activity is a spacious, carpeted registration room where people congregate between sessions and eat overpriced cafeteria food. Uniformed security personnel are posted here and throughout the hotel. Hebrew-speaking guards check name tags at an escalator, and a mean-looking cop coaxes a presumably bomb-sniffing Labrador retriever through the registration room.
Welcome to post-9/11 Washington, D.C.
Hannah Yecheskel, an eye doctor from the area, is not deterred by these precautions. This is her second Washington conference, and she views the program as part of her continuing "spiritual and political education."
One of the recurring themes of the conference is supporting Israel with your presence, not just your checkbook. The dark-haired Yecheskel is half-Israeli, and considers Judaism and Israel one and the same. "If you haven't been to Israel, this (conference) is a very good steppingstone" toward making the trip, she says.
The conference also allows for plenty of tikkun olam opportunities. Attendees can sponsor a Passover seder and personalize Passover greeting cards for needy Jewish families in Argentina, the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Poland or Israel. They can also write letters to U.S. and Israeli soldiers and to members of Congress, or list themselves in Gift of Life, an organization that facilitates bone-marrow transplants for patients by increasing the representation of Jewish people in the bone-marrow donor pool.
After an orientation and an hour of downtime, attendees pour into the Hilton's enormous International Ballroom for the Washington 14 opening plenary. Members of each city's delegation hold up signs to direct their fellow delegates to their seats. New Yorkers wear green foam Statue of Liberty crowns. Pittsburgh unfurls a long banner done up in Steelers' yellow and black. Atlanta members hoist signs embossed with pictures of peaches.
Amid the tumult, sign-holding Atlantan Debby Winston stands on a chair with her friend Shelly Schmahesser. Both are impressed by the sheer number of people gathered for the same cause. "You can't beat 1,800 Jews in a room," Winston enthuses.
The 26-member Cleveland delegation is seated near the front of the room. Howard Wolf, a business director at the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, holds up a black-and -red banner that says, "Cleveland Rocks," complete with a picture of a guitar.
"I didn't realize there were so many motivated young Jews," admits South Euclid attorney Jeremy Browner, 28. "We can be a true political force."
After three national anthems - U.S., Canada and Israel - the program begins. Washington 14 co-chairs Jonathan Mayer and Judith Sydney expound upon the conference's "We Can Make A Difference" theme, and UJC chair, Clevelander Bobby Goldberg, also says a few words.
The highlight of the plenary is cantankerous political humorist/author Al Franken. He gets some big laughs from the largely liberal crowd, as well as a few grumbles from the more conservative members of the audience.
Franken has few kind words for the Bush administration, but does give them a rather backhanded compliment for not planting weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after months of fruitless searching. "You know they thought about it," he quips.
Next, it's time to rush to the first series of breakout sessions. These range from heavier academic, social and political topics ("Civil Liberties and National Security, "Leadership in Times of Peril," "Messages from the Arab World - Overseas and at Home") to lighter fare on "Finding a Mate After 30" and "Jewish Expressions in Popular Culture."
I choose "Anti-Semitism in the United States," featuring a debate between Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt and radio talk-show host/author Dennis Prager. But Lipstadt, once sued for libel by Holocaust denier David Irving, was ill and could not attend.
Prager, described as "one of the three most interesting Jewish minds" by the New York Jewish Week, feels Jews should worry more about antisemitism coming from "the universities we historically venerate" than the backlash from Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."
In this post-9/11, post-intifada world, "the university is a moral wasteland," a place where anti-Israel sentiment, espoused by professors and parroted by impressionable students, is more prevalent than anywhere else in the country, he says.
The activist left is where the danger lies, not the Christian right, Prager insists. "It's time for Jews to grow up and smell the flowers of a truly decent society (conservative Christians) that loves Jews and wants that love reciprocated."
Instead of worrying about "The Passion," Jews should be "passionate" about going to Israel, "where it's a mitzvah just to go shopping," Prager remarks.
Despite its shortcomings, the U.S. is the best place in the world to be a Jew, he states. Arturo Arditti, a Jew from Mexico City, agrees. The 41-year-old architect grew up with "a spiritual link" to Israel and attends synagogue, but says Mexico City, which has about 40,000 Jews, is a place where he must be "inconspicuous" about his faith.
This is Arditti's third Washington conference. While a move to the U.S. might not be possible in the near future, "I always go home refueled and fulfilled, and I tell everyone I can about the experience," he says.
Meeting Jews from countries outside the U.S. and Israel and learning what makes them tick is refreshing. Nigel Savage, for example, was born in Manchester, England, and now lives in New York. He is founder of Hazon, a "radically inclusive" group of religious and secular, gay and straight Jews that holds annual "Jewish environmental bike rides" in the U.S. and Israel.
Hazon, a hebrew word for "vision," uses outdoor education "as a vibrant expression of Jewish life," says Savage, who is looking forward to an upcoming Israeli bike ride that starts in Jerusalem and ends in Eilat.
The Diaspora is well represented here, but Israel takes precedence. During a late-day breakout session, Jonny Alster, an IDF reservist, tells a hushed crowd about his experience in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002. An incursion in the camp resulted in the deaths of 23 Israeli soldiers, as well as accusations of human rights violations from pro-Palestinian groups.
In an emotional speech, Alster recalls how "insulted" and saddened he was after hearing claims of a massacre when he and his fellow soldiers took great care to avoid harming civilians (the charge was later disproven). He remembers debating the smallest moral issues, such as sitting in the kitchen of an abandoned Palestinian home in Jenin, wondering if it was ethical to take tea from someone's cupboard.
Alster, like many speakers at Washington 14, invites us to visit the Jewish state. "Israel needs American Jewry, and we have a lot to give," he says.
Dinner and an evening plenary are followed by a euphemistically named "community reception" that takes place throughout the hotel late into the night. A dry-erase board in the downstairs reception area promises all-night parties in the Chicago, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, New York and Miami suites. These get-togethers offer a college-like atmosphere of packed, smoky rooms where coeds concoct mixed drinks behind makeshift bars. I leave at 2 a.m. with the party still going strong. On my way out I hear one reveler tell his complaining friend, "Sleep when you get home, dude."
Monday, March 22
The morning's news demonstrates once again why we're here. Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin was killed overnight by missiles fired from an IDF assault helicopter. This could ratchet up violence against Israel and serve as another public relations nightmare for the Jewish state, we're told.
Meanwhile, I head to an 8 a.m. breakout session entitled "Gossip, Lies and Lessons." The speaker is author Lori Palatnik, a rabbi from Toronto. She warns of the dangers of lashon hora, giving advice on how to curb gossip and avoid others who spout it.
Palatnik loves the high-energy atmosphere of the conference, with the added bonus of hundreds of attractive singles to choose from. While she's avoided the parties ("I have five kids"), she has heard the stories of people finding their spouses during past events.
There's no shame if finding a mate is your sole reason for attending. "The greatest thing you can do for the Jewish people is to marry Jewish," Palatnik maintains.
Dan Nichols is happy, but not because he's found his soulmate. He's just a naturally happy guy jamming on an acoustic guitar at the entrance to the cafeteria during lunch. Nichols is the front man for Eighteen, a "Jewish modern rock band" that tours the country, including Cleveland.
When I meet the lanky Nashville resident, he's unselfconsciously singing a Hebrew song in a Ugandan dialect penned by Noam Katz. Nichols meets with plenty of smiles as he plays his guitar, and returns them with a smile of his own. Jewish music, he says, "helps me stay positive."
After lunch, we are back in the ballroom for that day's plenary. An entertaining and informative debate between CNN "Crossfire" co-host Paul Begala and National Review editor Kate O'Beirne is followed by a fiery speech by Ranaan Gissin, an advisor for Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Gissin knows his country is in for some rough times following the Yassin killing, but this shouldn't prevent attendees from supporting Israel. Gissin tells us of his service in the IDF many years ago, when soldiers walking through a dark alley would tap each other on their helmets to assure their "buddies" they were there.
Today, Israel is on the front line of a war, "but when you visit it is like you are tapping us on the helmet, and we know we are not alone," Gissin says to a standing ovation.
That night is UJC's "Never Say Dayenu" program, a somber, yet joyful event showing us where our Campaign for Jewish Needs dollars are going. In this vein we meet, among others, a young Israeli woman whose mother and handicapped sister were killed by a terrorist, and a Romanian boy who found his Jewish roots. We also meet Adam Mesh, better known as the "star" of the popular "Average Joe" reality TV show.
The night ends with songs as dozens of young delegates form a human chain and dance around the ballroom. Attendees also squeeze in one last night of partying before we "Take it to the Hill" the following morning.
Tuesday, March 23
Our last day in Washington is marked by clear blue skies and warmer temperatures. Today, we lobby our local senators and representatives on issues such as the Israel security fence, Medicaid, and homeland security assistance for Jewish institutions in the U.S.
The Cleveland delegation is shuffled onto buses bound for Capitol Hill soon after breakfast. This is our first real trip outside the hotel, and people are talkative and excited even after another long night of socializing.
Jeff Lynn, for one, is looking forward to this morning's event, which he calls "Hangover on the Hill." The good-humored podiatrist from University Heights is a little tired (he's gotten about eight hours of sleep over three nights), but that doesn't stop him from taking advantage of the conference's many "networking opportunities," i.e. collecting phone numbers from as many eligible young women as possible.
Jokes aside, it's been an enlightening trip for Lynn, who is impressed by the enthusiasm of so many people who care about Israel and are willing to spend their time and money to be here. Hopefully, "our strength in numbers" will bring "the Jewish voice" to those in power, he says.
The first stop for our Cleveland delegation is the office of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH), and the delegates laud her voting record for Israel. This meeting is followed by a sitdown with an aide to Dennis Kucinich (D-OH).
The next stop is the office of Republican Senator Mike DeWine, which we visit with our counterparts from Columbus and Cincinnati, about 85 of us in all. We are led by Joyce Garver Keller, executive director of the government affairs committee of Ohio Jewish Communities. Part of the group, meanwhile, goes to the Hart Senate Office Building to lobby Senator George Voinovich (R-OH).
After about 15 minutes, a slightly rumpled-looking DeWine arrives and thanks us for our vigilance. "I get 5,000 letters and e-mails a day," he says. "This is a good opportunity for (the Senate) to hear you directly."
Cincinnati native Adam Rosenberg, 25, shakes DeWine's hand and thanks him for his continuing support of the Jewish state. Rosenberg is the executive director of his Hamilton County Democratic delegation, but his political affiliation makes no difference here. "Today, I'm Adam the Jewish American, not Adam the Democrat," he says.
It's been a week since the trip, and Rosenberg feels like he's made "about 1,799 new friends," he tells me during a recent phone interview. He sees what's happening in the Middle East, in Mel Gibson's Hollywood and elsewhere, and "it makes me feel better to know there are 1,800 more people out there who know how to defend the state of Israel."
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