JUF News Express

Yesterday marked three years that Gilad Shalit has been held captive by Hamas. Hamas has continued to refuse a deal for his release and has threatened Israel that if it does not act soon, Gilad will suffer the same fate as Ron Arad. Gilad has been denied access to the International Red Cross and his family has been left to wonder about his health. International human rights groups continue to remain virtually silent on Gilad's fate.

JUF's Jewish Community Relations Council is asking the community to send a message to President Obama asking him to do everything in his power to bring Gilad Shalit home.

Shalit's mother Aviva Shalit wrote an open letter to the people of Israel asking for help to secure her son's release. At the same time, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Chairman Alan Solow, of Chicago, and Executive Vice Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein urged President Obama to "utilize all avenues" to secure Shalit's return.

In the latest developments in the Shalit case, European diplomatic sources said Shalit might be transferred to Egypt as part of a larger prisoner swap. The sources were quoted in the Israeli media Thursday as saying that Shalit would be transferred as a down payment in a prisoner exchange among Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian factions, and the opening of crossings between Israel and Gaza. The deal also would put Gaza under the control of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Ha'aretz reported.

If Shimon Peres ever seemed distracted during a Cabinet meeting, Israelis now know why: He was busy writing song lyrics on the side.

Israel’s senior statesman, it turns out, is actually a poet statesman — the pen behind a new collection of songs being released in August to coincide with his 86th birthday. The Nobel Peace Prize winner will host the launch party for the album late this summer in Tel Aviv, which serves as the inspiration for the disc’s first single: a wistful track about the city, recently released for radio play.

In related musical news, throughout the Israeli pop world, the language, ideas and character of ancient Jewish texts are suddenly common currency. The result is music that blends secular and the religious, East and West, reports The Forwar's Robbie Gringras. And Chicago's own Stereo Sinai is featured on "Pioneers for a Cure", a new recording of old folk songs that could be sung by all the Jews who immigrated to Palestine beginning in the 1920s. The project had Jewish performers making pilgrimages to Livingston, N.J., to record interpretations of old Israeli pioneer songs. The digital downloads of the songs are being sold online. The mission? Raise funds for cancer charities.

 In what may be the final opportunity for many Holocaust survivors, the international community is launching a new effort to reach understandings on restitution of property that belonged to Jews in Europe before the Nazi occupation, reports The Forward's Nathan Guttman.

The Conference on Holocaust Era Assets, scheduled to open in Prague June 26, will put a new focus on the immediate needs of living survivors and on ways to use the compensation process to provide relief for elderly survivors struggling with poverty and hardship.

An earlier conference, held in Washington in in 1998, set international guidelines for restitution and the return of looted art. But that effort has stalled in many ways. The Prague gathering is seen widely as an attempt to repair and renew the process, which has largely gone off track due to the refusal of several Eastern European countries to adopt its principles.

With over a $9 billion deficit and the only budget awaiting Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s signature calling for a 50 percent reduction in funding for human services, the Jewish Federation network of agencies is bracing for this draconian financial impact on itself and the projected 24,000 individuals who will be turned away from its life-sustaining services.

Jewish Federation Government Affairs chairman David T. Brown said “our community response to this imminent crisis must be both philanthropic and political. Those who haven’t yet done so are requested, urgently, to make their 2009 JUF annual campaign gift. The people who rely upon us need to know that their community will not abandon them. At the same time, each of us can participate in important advocacy and communicate our strong views to our state elected officials, especially the governor and the four leaders of the Illinois General Assembly.”

Read more about the crisis facing social service agencies.

In newly released tapes from the Nixon presidency, Richard Nixon is recorded as saying that if the Jews simply "behaved" themselves, there wouldn't be any problems. JTA's Eric Fingerhut highlights more of the former president's remarks on Jews and provides a link to the recordings on the Capital J blog.

Though no longer leading evening news reports, the swine flu -- which recently was upgraded to a pandemic -- has gradually but persistently been making its way into the Jewish community, according to a JTA report.

With the Jewish summer camp season about to begin, camps across the country are reporting outbreaks of the virus. Nine cases in total have been confirmed at two Jewish camps in Texas. At Ramah Darom in Clayton, Ga., roughly 100 cases of flu-like symptoms have been reported, though a spokesperson said 70 percent of those have recovered and the camp is operating normally.

Two Reform movement camps have delayed the start of the summer session due to concerns about the virus. A third movement camp has one confirmed case but is operating normally.

Descendants of Sephardic merchants who settled in a corner of the Amazon basin are converting and emigrating to the Jewish state. Until recently, a rebirth of Judaism here seemed unlikely. The history of Jews in Iquitos, Peru, dating from the late-19th-century rubber boom that transformed this far-flung Amazonian outpost into a once thriving city of imported Italian marble and a theater designed by Gustave Eiffel, was almost forgotten.

But Ronald Reátegui Levy and a handful of others began organizing the descendants of dozens of Jews from places as varied as Morocco, Gibraltar, Malta, England and France who had settled here and deeper in the jungle, opening trading houses and following their star in search of riches and adventure.