JERUSALEM — Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed some concerns about Israeli democracy in a closed-door session at the Saban Forum, reportedly criticizing proposed Knesset legislation aimed at curbing foreign funding of Israeli NGOs and gender-segregated bus lines serving charedi Orthodox areas.

A couple of weeks later, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman penned an op-ed article saying that he is “deeply worried about where Israel is going today.”

Maybe Clinton and Friedman first should take a hard look at the state of democracy at home.

In the spirit of Friedman’s letter-style columns, I offer my own only half-facetious letter on American democracy:

Dear Tom Friedman and Hillary Clinton,

As I write from Jerusalem and look at what is happening in America, I am very worried. Let me be clear: As someone who used to live in America, I love the United States. I also love liberal values. It is with both of these loves in mind that, as 2011 concludes, I must express my concern that the very core of America’s democratic underpinnings is disappearing.

Numerous events this year suggest a dangerous trend — not merely isolated incidents — that strikes at the heart of American democracy and ultimately could lead to the country’s downfall.

In November, I watched with horror as protestors at the Occupy demonstrations at the University of California Davis were viciously mistreated by police. Simply for sitting and showing opposition to America’s unfair economic structure, these students were violently and repeatedly pepper-sprayed. This form of police brutality can cause blindness and even death in some occurrences. The police reaction stands in stark contrast to the principle of freedom of assembly on which America was founded.

Frankly, the Occupy movements throughout the country were met with the type of violence that we normally see in totalitarian regimes here in the Middle East.

My deep love for America also drew my attention to New York, where local papers reported on gender-segregated bus lines in Brooklyn. Gender segregation is deplorable and — particularly when it occurs on buses — a stark reminder of a time when American bus companies enforced racial segregation. A democratic country that fails to stop gender segregation will soon cease to be democratic.

I have been horrified, as well, as I learn of the views of Michele Bachmann, a mainstream Republican presidential candidate who has such a popular following that she was atop the polls at one point. Yet, her views on homosexuality have no place in a democratic society that claims to treat all citizens equally. In a 2004 conference, Bachmann said that “gays are part of Satan.” And her husband’s counseling center espouses the view that Christianity can “cure” homosexuality (a view that only this week was echoed by over 150 Orthodox rabbis, who declared that psychological therapy was the only “Torah-approved way” of dealing with “same sex attractions,” to use their words).

However religious authorities view homosexuality, these views on a politician’s part are destructive and hateful and have no place among the leaders of a democratic society.

The same goes for Arizona’s viscously anti-immigrant law, which was signed by Arizona’s governor in April 2010, but is now being challenged at the U.S. Supreme Court. This law makes the failure to carry immigration documents a crime, effectively encouraging racial profiling by police officers and discriminating against Hispanics. The United States was founded by immigrants. Why turn against them? Treating immigrants as second-class citizens and assuming guilt is the antithesis of democracy. It is a sign of impending doom.

Finally, as 2011 ends, the Racial Justice Act soon may be repealed in North Carolina. What greater sign is there of the erosion of democracy than eliminating something called the Racial Justice Act — which has allowed death-row inmates to argue that racial bias played a role in their cases?

If the legislative pursuits of the Tea Party in North Carolina are a bellwether for democracy in the United States — and I believe they are — then other states certainly will follow with racist legislation. What’s next — churches banning interracial marriage?

Again, my concerns come from a place of love. I worry that the United States is on a self-destructive path and that the death of American democracy is near. This should serve as a wake-up call for deep, personal reflection about the choices Americans have made.

America can still regain its democratic footing, but it requires more action at home, not more handwringing about the internal politics of countries overseas.

Yours,

Jason Edelstein

Concerned American Living Abroad

JTA Wire Service

While the bright Chanukah lights were kindled during the shivah for Prof. Paula E. Hyman, they could not dispel the darkness that overcame her family and friends, colleagues and students with her death on Thursday, Dec. 15. Her luminous smile, her bright intelligence, and her shining example will be sorely missed.

Paula Hyman was one of those rare people who seamlessly integrated the disparate parts of her personal and professional life. She was an activist, as well as a scholar; a wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, and sister, as well as a productive professional. She was passionately committed to the wide sweep of her interests and managed to balance them well.

MINSK, Belarus – Earlier this year, I spent a week in the Valley — not its shadow, the actual valley — of Death. I traveled throughout Belarus, a Kansas-sized ex-Soviet landlocked country hedged between Russia and Poland. The Germans and their collaborators murdered approximately 90 percent of the one million Jews who lived here in 1941, including many of my relatives. This is not about death, however, but life. Specifically, it is about two women who would not die, and about our lone surviving cousin, whom we miraculously located.

Maya Levina-Krapina was 7 years old in 1942 when the Germans began exterminating the Jews of the Minsk Ghetto, where 100,000 perished. They bayoneted children in the youth hut. Maya hid quietly under a mattress as the carnage ensued. She still bears on her back scars from the German bayonet. Her brother, 15-year-old Iosif, a scout for Jewish partisans operating in the deep birch forests, was determined to save her. He put Maya in the infirmary for infectious diseases, where Germans were reluctant to patrol.

The news of the death of Christopher Hitchens brought with it a deep sadness and I instantly recited the Jewish prayer upon hearing of the passing of a friend, “Blessed is the True Judge.”

That instinctive religious action captured the paradox of our unpredictable friendship, born in battle in four public debates — stretching from 2004 until 2010 — on God, faith, evolution, and religion, but solidified over food at kosher restaurants, kosher wines, and, of course, healthy swigs of whisky.

Advocates for Jewish or other religious schools are understandably anxious to establish legislative precedents that might someday allow for full funding of at least the secular portion of the education day schools supply. And given political and demographic realities, it is understandable that Jewish advocates will follow the lead of others. There are simply more Catholics, Evangelicals, and others who dislike public education and educators than there are Jews interested in funding Jewish education. But often it is not wise to follow the leader.

The Opportunity Scholarship Act, pending in the New Jersey legislature, presents such a case. It is of no help to Jewish schools, and it is particularly perverse public policy. It is hardly the voucher bill it is said to be.

The bill — which would provide tax credits for corporations donating funds for scholarships for low-income students attending failing schools, or, more precisely, living in districts with failing schools, to attend non-public schools — is a textbook case of legislation ideal for non-Jewish religious schools, and for those who would dismantle public education. The proposed measure is useless for Jewish schools.

The bill says that it is a reaction to a failed attempt by “school choice” proponents to have the judiciary create a funding mechanism for poor students assigned to persistently failing schools to attend religious or other non-public schools. Supporters of the scholarship program brought suit in 2007 to have the courts create a voucher program for children in failing schools. In 2009, the appellate division threw the case out on the grounds that it was premature to speculate on remedies if the then new school reforms did not result in improvements.

The lawsuit, essentially an attempt to legislate school vouchers by judicial decree, illustrated that requests for judicial activism are not an exclusive preserve of liberals.

If the bill’s supporters were interested in providing students in failed schools a viable educational option, a remedy is readily available: Allow such students to transfer to nearby public school districts and mandate that they accept such transfers, subject to space availability. No doubt that kind of plan would create racial and class controversy, but it would both keep public education intact and give students in failing schools real educational choices.

School choice activists are interested for ideological reasons in undermining the monopoly of public education. Thus, at least a quarter of the scholarships may be used by students not currently attending failing public schools. How does paying for Orthodox students in Passaic or Lakewood — who, in any event, would not attend public schools — improve public education?

Moreover, the Opportunity Scholarship Act takes direct aim at the democratic control of education, delegating decisions to corporate representatives about how much is spent on scholarships, which organizations will be allowed to distribute scholarships, and how the program will be evaluated. The board approving entities to distribute funded scholarships is to be made up of persons working for corporations paying the franchise tax — not a single educator, representative of a minority group, or individual involved in public or private education will be included. But education is a public responsibility, not a corporate one.

These, and other flaws in the bill, are objections (or, depending on one’s point of view, advantages) shared by Jews with the general public.

One feature of the bill, however, is a poison pill for many, if not most, Jewish schools, though not for non-Jewish religious schools. Scholarships may only be used in private schools that “do not discriminate in [their] admissions policies or practices for scholarship applicants.” That would exclude Jewish schools that insist on admitting only Jews — whether defined patrilineally, matrilineally, or otherwise — or that even prefer such students. Catholic inner-city schools already admit all comers, and many Christian schools have evangelizing as one of their goals.

Jewish schools have two primary tasks: introducing students to Jewish traditions and texts, and providing an environment where young Jews meet other young Jews — which, in the long run, will lead to in-marriages. Both of these are undermined by introducing non-Jews into the student body. Different friendships will be formed, largely defeating the social purposes of Jewish schools of whichever denomination.

And what will non-Jewish students do during Bible, Talmud, or holiday studies? Inevitably, unless schools simply ignore the needs of their non-Jewish students, the curriculum will need to be diluted and its message altered to accommodate those state-funded students. Or, perhaps, Jewish supporters of the bill may hope that non-Jews will be deterred from applying by the rigors of a dual program.

True, the Opportunity Scholarship Act is billed as a pilot program. But there is no chance that once anti-discrimination provisions are in place, they would be removed or watered down should the program be made permanent and general.

No one should deny the urgent need to find new ways to finance Jewish (and non-Jewish) education. The Opportunity Scholarship Act is not it.

If you were given a chance to change the life of a child, to give low-income families the opportunity to escape failing or dangerous schools—and to do so while saving the state money — would you take that chance?

The obvious answer: Yes.

Currently, the price of educating a student in a New Jersey public school is approximately $18,000, with certain school districts paying even more. Asbury Park, for example, pays nearly $40,000 per student (according to an audit performed by the Common Sense Institute of New Jersey), yet 100 percent of the students in this district attend “failing schools.” These students deserve better.

The Opportunity Scholarship Act would allow students from low-income families to obtain scholarships to attend private schools or out-of-district public schools of their choice. These scholarships would offer a maximum of $8,000 for elementary school students and $11,000 for high school students, saving school districts roughly half the cost of educating each scholarship recipient.

Today, many low-income parents cannot choose the best school for that child; they lack the funds to attend private school or to move to a better school district. The OSA moves us closer to a time when a child’s opportunities are not determined by zip code or income level.

Many criticisms have been leveled at the OSA, but after several revisions to the proposed law, these criticisms have been either addressed or debunked.

For example, some opponents argue that state funds cannot go to non-public schools. This is false because the New Jersey Constitution has no Blaine Amendment, which forbids state funds to sectarian institutions. Moreover, OSA scholarship money goes directly from private donors to scholarship organizations to disadvantaged students. The student then decides which participating school to fund, whether public or non-public. The state neither collects the money nor decides where it ends up — a method the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld.

When critics worried that the OSA would divert funds from local public schools, it was revised to pass on the savings as well as the costs to local school districts. Although school districts bear the costs of their students’ scholarships, they also avoid the costs of educating those students. Since the average school district spends $18,000 on each student, districts will save at least $10,000 or $8,000 for each scholarship recipient in elementary or high school, respectively. The money saved by the OSA will allow school districts to invest even more money in the remaining students.

When opponents claimed that OSA funds could be used for current non-public school students to continue attending non-public school, the OSA was revised. Under the new bill, only current public school students or students entering grades one, six, or nine (entry points for elementary, junior high, and high school, respectively) can receive OSA scholarships. To claim that the OSA would subsidize existing private school students would be at best mistaken, and at worst disingenuous.

Finally, some object that the OSA will help only a small percentage of the students in the failing schools. This is irrelevant. When a building is on fire and only a few occupants can be saved, should the firemen give up because they cannot save everyone? No, they should attempt to rescue as many people as they can. Indeed, we would rather help more children escape failing or costly schools, but many legislators want to first test the OSA as a pilot program.

We are confident that if implemented, the OSA’s success will speak for itself.

JERUSALEM – The State of Israel has always prided itself on being not only a home to its native citizens, but a haven for Jews from across the globe. For years, the Ministry of Immigration Absorption has successfully focused on attracting Jews from around the world to make aliyah and reconnect with their homeland. This past year alone, more than 19,000 Jewish people chose to start life anew in the Jewish state.

With so much effort spent on welcoming Jews from abroad, the ministry runs the risk of losing sight of another pressing concern: the deflating number of our own citizens.

The notion that Israel is primarily responsible for deteriorating relations with Turkey, Egypt and the Palestinians, as claimed by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in his speech to the 2011 Saban Forum last weekend, is more than simply inaccurate. It is disturbing and potentially dangerous.

While bad at any time, his finding fault with Israel at a time of great instability and uncertainty in the region is particularly distressing. More than ever, Israel stands out as an island of stability and friendship with the United States.