President Bush’s State of the Union address Tuesday evening reconfirmed to the Jewish community that it will largely have to look to itself to meet the needs of Jews at home and abroad.
The Jewish community, which is hard hit by the recession, must face the “harsh reality” that it can depend on no one but itself, said Mark Talisman, director of the Washington Action Office of the Council of Jewish Federations.
While Bush’s economic proposals left many Jewish leaders unsatisfied, his attack on bigotry, including anti-Semitism, was welcomed.
“If you read the papers or watch TV, you know there’s been a rise these days in a certain kind of bitterness, racist comments, anti-Semitism, an increased sense of division,” Bush said.
“Really, this is not us,” he said. “This is not who we are. And this is not acceptable.”
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said he was pleased that the president used his “bully pulpit” to denounce racism and anti-Semitism specifically.
Bush’s address focused almost exclusively on economic issues. His only mention of Israel came after he reminded his audience of the liberation of Kuwait from Iraq last year.
“Soon after, the Arab world and Israel sat down to talk seriously, and comprehensively, about peace, an historic first.”
Talisman, who said he had witnessed 33 State of the Union messages, said he was disturbed by the intense partisanship shown Tuesday night by both Democrats and Republicans. “We need problem-solving,” not partisanship, he said.
SHARP CUT IN RESETTLEMENT FUNDS
The president’s speech was a “mixed message” for the Jewish community, Talisman said.
He said that while the president is proposing increases for some domestic needs, such as the Head Start program and emergency food and shelter, funds for resettling refugees are being cut from $421 million to $227 million.
This will hit hard local Jewish communities that are already reeling over the burden of resettling thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union.
The Jewish community is also suffering from the recession, as are many other Americans, Talisman said. Jews who used to be donors to their federations are now coming to them for aid.
Jews have a high percentage of elderly, many of whom are on fixed incomes, Talisman said. They are hurt by the same low interest rates that help younger people, he pointed out.
He also said that Jews involved in sales, whether retail or supply, have been hard hit by the high unemployment caused by the recession.
On a more partisan note, Steve Gutow, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, called Bush’s speech “the wrong medicine for the nation’s economic ills.”
He said Bush’s “tax package amounts to a regressive proposal based on patented Republican trickle-down economics.”
But his Republican counterpart, Matthew Brooks, executive director of the National Jewish Coalition, said Bush demonstrated that he is “dealing in an aggressive manner with the economic problems of our country.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
