Comments (0)Boston Jewish Community Drops Arts Center Plan
April 3, 2010Boston
JTA Wire Service
Boston’s Jewish community has abandoned a plan to build an $80 million arts and cultural center to be designed by renowned architect Daniel Libeskind.
The plan for the New Center for the Arts and Culture, announced in 2004, as well as other cultural projects slated for development on the newly created Rose Kennedy Greenway, was dropped due to a lack of funding.
In the current economy, the decision not to build was a relief, acknowledged Francine Achbar, the center’s executive director.
“The business we were always in was gathering programs and offering cultural experiences seen from the Jewish perspective,” she said.
New Center will continue to host its programs in venues throughout the city, she told JTA.
“Of course we are disappointed,” Libeskind told JTA in an exclusive statement read in a phone conversation from Milan by Nina Libeskind, the architect’s wife and chief operating officer of Libeskind’s New York-based studio.
Libeskind, designer of the rebuilding of Ground Zero in New York, the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, commended the New Center as an institution that promotes tolerance.
“It would have been a perfect fit to activate the Rose Kennedy Greenway,” he said in the statement.
Libeskind concluded in the statement that in tough economic times, it is “ironically precisely the moment when one needs culture the most, when one needs stamina, belief, and faith in the future. We will remain committed to this idea and hope that at some point it will be revived.”
The New Center effort was launched originally in a collaboration between the Greater Boston Jewish Community Centers and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies to bring cultures together through the arts. The idea was based on research that showed that the arts, and Jewish arts and cultural programs, would attract many Jews who are not otherwise engaged in Jewish organizations.
That idea continues to shape New Center’s programs, Achbar said. A program last week titled the “Great God Debate”—between Rabbi David Wolpe and writer Christopher Hitchens—sold more than 900 tickets. An Israeli film series attracted young Jews in their 20s and 30s, from Orthodox to non-religious, Achbar said.
Judge Denies Easter Mass for Jewish Girl
A court in Chicago has ruled that a father may not take his Jewish daughter to Catholic Mass on Easter.
Joseph Reyes grabbed headlines when he took his daughter to church and had her baptized despite a temporary restraining order filed by his estranged wife that bars him from exposing their daughter to anything but the Jewish faith.
On Wednesday, during divorce proceeding hearings, Reyes asked Cook County Court Judge Renee Goldfarb if he could take his daughter, Ela, to Catholic Mass on Easter Sunday. The judge denied his request, citing the restraining order.
The judges’ final ruling in the divorce case is expected to be delivered in a couple weeks.
Reyes converted to Judaism when he married his wife, Rebecca, and according to her promised to raise their daughter in the Jewish faith. But after the couple filed for divorce he baptized Ela without his wife’s knowledge.
Candidate Disavows J Street
A candidate in a tight Democratic primary race in suburban Philadelphia asked J Street to pull its endorsement.
Doug Pike told the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent that he was not aware of the depth of his differences with J Street when he accepted the left-wing, pro-Israel group’s endorsement. He also suggested that he had faced tough questions for taking money from
J Street’s political action committee.
“Belatedly, I got a clearer sense of the important points where J Street looks at things differently than I look at things,” Pike was quoted as saying in this week’s Exponent. “Also, people simply assumed when they heard that I was endorsed by J Street that I agreed with them on everything. The endorsement was an impediment to my being able to explain my convictions about Israel’s security.”
J Street is critical of Israel’s settlement policy and backs the Obama administration’s calls for freezing settlements in eastern Jerusalem as a means of resuming peace talks with the Palestinians.
Pike plans to return the $6,375 he had received through J Street’s political action committee.
“We wish Doug Pike well, but are pleased to see him return the funds provided to his campaign, as it is our purpose only to support politicians with the courage of their convictions,” J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami told the Exponent.
Pike is running against Manan Triveldi, an Iraq War veteran, in a district that includes a substantial number of Jewish voters. The winner will seek to unseat Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.), who is seen as vulnerable.
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.