Alisa Doctoroff and Alon Pinkas |
Ismar Schorsch |
SCHECHTER
INSTITUTE
Consul General
Pinkas Says
Not Legal To Call Him Counsel
By Tim Boxer
 ON’T
call Alon Pinkas Israel’s general counsel in New York. Alisa
Doctoroff introduced him that way at a gathering of supporters
of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies gathering at the
Upper West Side brownstone she shares with her husband, Deputy
Mayor Dan Doctoroff.
“I’m the consul
general,” Pinkas said. “General counsel is a lawyer – that I
will not be!”
He quickly apologized to
the sprinkling of attorneys in the audience, including high
powered lawyer Robert Rifkind, Schechter’s chairman of
the board, who was grinning ear to ear.
Some 40 people applauded
an upbeat report from Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the
Jewish Theological Seminary.
The Schechter Institute,
which grants ordination for Conservative rabbis in Israel, is no
longer only an extension of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New
York, the chancellor said.
It just received full
Israeli accreditation as an educational institution, so it is now
a wholly independent entity. Its degrees will be Israeli degrees,
no longer JTS degrees.
After calling for
importing the American ideal of pluralism into Israeli society,
Pinkas switched to the political maelstrom in the Middle East
where, he said, he feels more comfortable.
“I’m from the Camp
David school,” he said. “We are the only country in the world
without borders. Until you have borders, you won’t know where
Israel is and you won’t have stability.
Alon
Pinkas and Robert Rifkind |
“The first thing we
should have done is kick Arafat out. He is an impediment to
Arab progress. Send him to some retirement home in Boca. He’s a
corrupt good-for-nothing anti-statesman idiot. Look at the
tragedies he has brought to both people.”
Pinkas warned that a
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be found before
it is too late.
“If I were a
Palestinian I’d say forget about two states. Let’s live
together in one state.”
That would mark the end
of Israel, he explained, because in 10 years the Palestinians will
be a majority in the land between the Jordan and the
Mediterranean, thus effectively dooming the Zionist vision of a
Jewish state. |
