FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)The second day of negotiations over enriching Iran’s uranium in another country were delayed as the delegations met for consultations.
The delay Tuesday in Vienna came following a news conference by Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in which he stated that “Iran will never abandon its legal and obvious right” to nuclear technology.
“The meetings with world powers and their behavior shows that Iran’s right to have peaceful nuclear technology has been accepted by them,” Mottaki said.
The meeting also was delayed after Iran announced Tuesday that France must be excluded from a final deal.
The negotiations are expected to resume Wednesday.
The United States, France and Russia began meeting Monday with Iranian diplomats to discuss a deal by which a third country, namely Russia, would convert about 2,600 pounds of Iran’s low-enriched uranium into fuel for a nuclear reactor to be used for medical purposes.
A tentative deal on the plan was announced at a meeting of Tehran officials and Western powers in Geneva at the beginning of the month.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, whose organization is sponsoring the meeting, called the first day of meetings “a good start.”
The deal would test whether Iran is serious about allowing the international community to police its nuclear program. Failure to seal an agreement will help strengthen the case for sanctions, some U.S. officials argue, according to the Washington Post.
Still Mottaki said that Iran would not give up its nuclear enrichment program, as the United Nations Security Council has demanded.
“Iran will continue its uranium enrichment. It is not linked to buying fuel from abroad,” he told reporters, according to Reuters.
Inspectors from the IAEA are preparing a visit Sunday to a previously undisclosed nuclear enrichment facility hidden underground near the holy Iranian city of Qom.
The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany are scheduled to meet with Iranian officials at the end of the month to continue the discussion of Iran’s nuclear program.
Monument to Treblinka Deportees Dedicated
A monument honoring some 40,000 Jews deported to the Treblinka death camp in 1942 was dedicated in the Polish city of Czestochowa.
The monument, designed by the Czestochowa-born Israeli artist Samuel Willenberg, was unveiled Tuesday as part of a three-day gathering of the World Society of Czestochowa Jews and their descendants.
Polish government officials, Holocaust survivors and Polish-born Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, the chairman of Yad Vashem and former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, took part in the dedication ceremony.
The monument is designed in the form of a cracked wall and includes a star of David made of railway track.
Other events during the three-day meeting included an exhibition by the American artist Fay Grajower and an academic conference.
A commemorative concert by violinist Joshua Bell was scheduled for Tuesday evening at the Czestochowa philharmonic hall. Bell was to perform on a 300-year-old Stradivarius that once belonged to the Czestochowa-born Jewish violinist Bronislaw Huberman, who died in Switzerland in 1947.
The philharmonic hall stands on the site of the city’s New Synagogue, destroyed by the Nazis in 1939.
Bell is scheduled to perform Wednesday on the Huberman violin at a gala concert in Warsaw held to raise funds for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews under construction.
Sydney Kosher Kitchen Goes Halal
A Lubavitch-run kosher community kitchen gained halal certification.
Our Big Kitchen in Sydney, run by the Yeshiva Center, received halal certification Wednesday in the presence of New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees, who learned to make challah during his visit.
The kitchen has been used to help feed the needy as well as for emergency service.
“It is fantastic to see people of all faiths working together to further the important charitable work of Our Big Kitchen,” said Rabbi Eli Feldman of Sydney’s Young Chabad. “With both kosher and halal certification, Our Big Kitchen can service all segments of the Australian community.”
Halal is the Muslim designation for food that is permissible to eat.
Sophie Abuta, a Palestinian Australian whose husband donated the kitchen tiles, said she hoped the kitchen would help Jews and Palestinians “cook our way to peace.”
Ikebal Patel, the chairman of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, also was in attendance along with Rabbi Pinchus Feldman, the spiritual leader of Chabad in New South Wales, and the heads of the kashrut and halal certification boards.
The kitchen was founded by Brooklyn-born Rabbi Dovid Slavin in 2007. Among the numerous dignitaries who have visited are Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Governor-General Quentin Bryce.
Moscow Closes Two Nativ Offices
Russian officials reportedly closed two local offices of Israel’s Nativ organization.
The St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk offices of the group, which helps Jews from the former Soviet Union make aliyah, have been closed, according to a report Oct. 14 in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv.
The closings will make it difficult, if not impossible, for more than 200 Russian Jews currently seeking to leave for Israel to receive the documents they need, the newspaper reported.
Nativ’s primary work is to determine if Russian Jews requesting to immigrate to Israel are eligible to make aliyah under the Law of Return.
The move comes two weeks after Israeli diplomat Shmuel Polishuk, head of the Nativ delegation to Russia, was asked to leave the country.
Polishuk, according to media reports including Ma’ariv and Reuters, was sent out of the country after being accused of espionage. Nativ officials also told Ma’ariv that Russian security agencies were following Nativ employees and interfering in their work.
“Shmuel Polishuk was caught red-handed in Moscow,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told Reuters, though Polishuk was not declared a persona non-grata by Moscow, which is usually done to suspected spies.
The Israeli government formally cut links between Nativ and Israeli intelligence services a decade ago.
During Soviet times, Nativ developed covert contacts with Jews in the Soviet bloc, but with the lifting of the Iron Curtain, it became directly involved in encouraging Jews from the former Soviet Union to make aliyah.