L.A. foundation cites big Madoff losses
The Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles said last week that jailed Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff swindled the foundation out of $18 million. The foundation invested the money from a common investment pool with Madoff starting in 2004, foundation president Marvin Schotland said.
The loss represents less than 3 percent of the group’s total assets, which totaled about $670 million at the end of last year, Schotland said. The group is one of Los Angeles’ 10 largest foundations.
Madoff is in jail pending sentencing for stealing billions of dollars from investors in what could be the biggest scam in Wall Street history. — ap
Barbara Lee tracks activist case
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) is monitoring inquiries into how a constituent was wounded while protesting Israel’s separation barrier.
Lee told Congress that she was tracking the case of Oakland resident Tristan Anderson, an activist who was hit in the head March 13 by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops during a protest near the West Bank town of Naalin.
“Something went horribly wrong in the village of Naalin, and I am determined to get to the bottom of it,” Lee said in a recent statement on the floor of the House of Representatives. She said she has asked the State Department to keep her apprised of any investigations. — jta
Ex-Nazi deportation on again, off again
A U.S. immigration judge has reversed a stay of deportation for convicted Nazi guard John Demjanjuk, clearing the way for the 89-year-old who resides in suburban Cleveland to be deported to Germany.
Demjanjuk, who was stripped in 2002 of his U.S. citizenship for lying about his Nazi past, had been scheduled to be deported April 5, but was granted an indefinite stay of deportation by Judge Wayne Iskra two days earlier. Germany had requested his extradition in order to try him on an indictment that includes 29,000 counts of accessory to murder.
Iskra, of the Federal Immigration Court in Arlington, Va., reversed his decision April 6, but a day later, a lawyer for Demjanjuk said he filed an appeal, asking the court to block his client’s deportation. Attorney John Broadley said that Demjanjuk is frail, in pain and in poor health, and that forcing him to go to Germany amounts to torture. — jta
Two Jews named to Obama panel
President Barack Obama has named leaders of the Orthodox Union and the National Council of Jewish Women to his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
Nathan Diament, public policy director of the OU, and Nancy Ratzan, president of NCJW, were both appointed to one-year terms on the 25-member panel. They join Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism Director Rabbi David Saperstein, who was appointed in February to the panel, which aims to identify the best practices, suggest improvements and make recommendations on the delivery of social services.
The council was established earlier this year as part of Obama’s revamping of President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative. — jta
First lady visits Prague Jewish area
Michelle Obama, accompanied by Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and political consultant David Axelrod, made an April 5 visit to the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague’s Jewish Quarter. The names of 80,000 Jewish victims of the Holocaust from Bohemia and Moravia are inscribed on the synagogue’s walls.
While in the Czech capital, the first lady also visited the Old Jewish Cemetery, stopping at the graves of important figures from Prague’s Jewish history. She placed a folded piece of paper with a personal wish on the grave of rabbi and kabbalist Judah Loew ben Bezalel, also known by his acronym MaHaRaL, who died in 1609.
Obama also visited the Old-New Synagogue, the oldest European synagogue still used for religious purposes, where she was greeted by representatives of the Czech Jewish community. — jta
Rabbi sentenced for tax fraud
Rabbi Moshe Zigelman of Brooklyn, N.Y., was sentenced last week to two years in prison for a tax fraud and money-laundering scheme after pleading guilty last year in a Los Angeles federal court.
Zigelman, 61, was a key figure in an alleged conspiracy in which he and others solicited millions of dollars benefiting five charities of the untra-Orthodox Spinka sect. Contributors were given receipts for large sums to use as charity write-offs on their tax returns while secretly getting back 80 percent to 95 percent of their donations. — jta
U.S. to lift ban on Netanyahu aide
Ha’aretz reported last week that the United States reportedly will lift its ban on Uzi Arad, a former Mossad chief whom Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to make his national security adviser.
He has been denied a visa since 2007, reportedly because he is referred to in the indictment against Larry Franklin, a former Pentagon Iran analyst who pleaded guilty to relaying classified information.
Arad has said his two meetings in 2004 with Franklin were innocent and did not involve classified information. — jta