Washington: Splitting Hairs or Hair-Raising Splits?

Jerusalem Post
March 9, 2006

Kansas City's Brit Tzedek chapter presents the program "Senator Brownback's Peace: Should Congress declare Jerusalem to be the 'Undivided Capital of Israel'?" at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, May 15, in the boardroom at the Jewish Community Campus.

On April 19, three Republican senators, led by Kansas' Sam Brownback, introduced resolution S.J. 14 to have the United States government declare Jerusalem the "undivided capital of Israel." The resolution goes even further; stating Congress will refuse to recognize a Palestinian state unless the international community "resolves the status of Jerusalem by recognizing the city as the undivided capital of Israel." (For the entire text of the bill, go to http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query and search for S.J. 14.)

Sunday's meeting will offer a virtual political tour of Jerusalem led by Joseph Berman, a Kansas City area native who has been living in Jerusalem for the past few months and who has worked with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. His talk will feature maps, photographs and personal stories about borders, demographics, settlements, the separation barrier, checkpoints and peace and co-existence work on the ground. Joseph is the son of Judy Jacks and Steve Berman. He graduated from the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy in 2000 and from Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 2004. He is currently in the midst of a one-year New Israel Fund/Shatil social justice fellowship in Israel. Starting in the fall, Joseph Berman will enter the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia.