Young Israel's celebration of 40 years on campus highlighted at April 5 forum

This year marks the coincidence of a number of historic dates pertinent to Cornell and its Jewish students.

As Israel commemorates 50 years of independence, Young Israel of Cornell is celebrating its 40th anniversary on campus and the Center for Jewish Living is celebrating its 10th.

A forum titled "Civil Rights, Civil Liberties: Preserving the Constitution in the Next Millennium," sponsored by the Center for Jewish Living and held Sunday, April 5, a week before Passover, offered thematic continuity between these milestone events and the flight of Israelites from Egypt 3,300 years ago. Prominent public figures who have been instrumental in changing civil rights practices, policies and laws in this country and abroad spoke at the event.

Cornell Dean of Students John Ford, who delivered the welcoming address for the April 5 forum, said: "It was a very special occasion for me to meet participants like Jack Greenberg, who I hold in very high esteem as one of the greatest civil rights attorneys in our history. The forum was intellectually stimulating because it presented the issues of civil rights and civil liberties from so many different perspectives -- not only the civil rights movement of the minority groups in the United States but also Holocaust and World War II issues and women's rights."

Jack Greenberg, who in his 36 years with the NAACP argued 40 civil rights cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, including the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation case, spoke about the relevance of civil rights today.

Other participants included: former U.S. Secretary of Labor for the Bush administration Lynn Martin, who examined the role of women in today's workplace; Walter Reich, distinguished visiting scholar for the Library of Congress and former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, who presented emotionally gripping slides and stories of Holocaust victims; Nathan Lewin, attorney for the "Yale Five" students and former deputy assistant attorney general during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations; and E. Joshua Rosenkranz of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

The keynote speaker for the Sunday evening dinner was Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union and professor of law at New York Law School. Strossen defended the importance of preserving free speech as a constitutional right, even if it means tolerating hate speech. Strossen is the author of Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights.

The Young Israel house is part of the larger Center for Jewish Living, built in 1988-89. In addition to the residence hall, the center includes a 250-seat dining facility, a chapel with stained-glass windows, an extensive Judaica library, an art gallery and a rock garden. The center is located on a one-acre site at 106 West Ave. and serves as a gathering spot for all Jewish Cornellians -- conservative, orthodox and reform.

For Richard Bornstein '62, who spoke at the April 5 forum, it's a home away from home. "If you can't make it to Israel," he said, "then the second best place to be for Passover is Young Israel of Cornell."