B Nai B Rith

WASHINGTON -- President Bush, refusing to concede the traditionally Democratic and potentially embittered Jewish vote, argued yesterday that he's been a better friend to Israel than his opponent Bill Clinton could ever be.With his re-election campaign now a daily struggle for every possible vote, Mr. Bush could not resist making what he considers a good case for a significant share of support from the nation's 5.5 million Jews, many of whom are concentrated in...

Jewish leaders here and across the nation, horrified by reports of detention camp atrocities and "ethnic cleansing" in far-off Bosnia-Herzegovina, are demanding immediate American intervention to head off a disaster they compare to the Holocaust of half a century ago."Not since the Cambodian massacres [of the 1970s] have I seen the Jewish community so agitated and so energized," Rabbi A. James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee said yesterday.Rabbi Rudin referred to "the trains, the camps, families separated, people with the 'wrong' last names or who are part of the 'wrong' group," and likened the new horrors not only to the World War II Holocaust but to the three-year reign of terror by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s that killed more than a million of Cambodia's 8 million people.

Maurice R. Shochatt, 80, a journalist and public relations man with a voice in many Baltimore causes, died yesterday at Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital of complications from cerebral palsy and diabetes.Funeral services will be at 10 a.m. tomorrow at the Levinson funeral establishment, 6010 Reisterstown Road. Burial will be in Petach Tickvah Congregation Cemetery in Rosedale.Born in Ukraine, Mr. Shochatt came to America as a child and settled in Baltimore with his parents, the late Sholom and Shiffa Shochatt.

The county's black-Jewish coalition has criticized a prominent Jewish service organization in Annapolis for inviting the South Africanambassador to speak at one of its meetings.After several weeks of internal discussion about Harry Schwarz's scheduled Dec. 8 visit tospeak at a B'nai B'rith meeting, the coalition issued a statement this week calling South African society "an affront to all decent people everywhere.""Ambassador Schwarz's visit to our city reminds us that the all-white minority government of South Africa continues to deny the right to vote to the majority of its black citizens," the African American-Jewish Coalition of Anne Arundel County said in the statement.

MOSCOW -- The men running the Soviet Union did everything they could to make sure everyone got the story right. They filled television with old movies, they jammed radio programs and they shut down any newspaper that didn't get it right:Mikhail S. Gorbachev was sick and would be back to work eventually. The conscientious vice president was taking over to carry on the ailing president's philosophy. The motherland was being saved from anarchy and chaos.Within hours, most of Moscow was ridiculing this version of events as the truth swept the city.

EMMY A. KOLODNY remembers her aunts leaving their Amsterdam home in 1942, knapsacks on their backs, "without any protest." The Germans had occupied Holland since 1940, but the slaughter had not begun. At first, Dutch Jews went meekly to their deaths. In her mind's eye, "I see these two really healthy women, going off like they were going to summer camp," Kolodny says.Her aunts never returned. Called up by the Nazis to labor in eastern Holland, they were eventually transferred to an extermination camp and murdered.

State rules insurance policies can't be canceledMaryland Insurance Commissioner John A. Donaho has announced that the insurance policies of Marylanders serving in the Persian Gulf cannot be canceled while they are on active duty.In a Notice and Order involving more than 1,400 insurance companies licensed to operate statewide, Donaho said life insurance policies "may not be terminated by the insurer because of any military service of the insured, and unless the policy contains war restrictions, benefits under the policy may not be reduced by reason of any loss resulting directly or indirectly from services of the insured in the military, naval or air forces in the United States."

Wartime exigencies hasten divorces, tooThe stories of weddings hastened by the Persian Gulf war are by now familiar, if still bittersweet. Men and women, called up to duty, move up wedding plans so they can marry before leaving.There is a less romantic flip side to this, however: Divorces must be expedited, too.Alice G. Pinderhughes, a master in the city's divorce courts, says several young men have come before her in recent weeks, asking that she waive the waiting period and finalize a pending divorce.

Sidney H. Schreter, a retired necktie manufacturer who twice was president of the Beth Jacob Congregation and the Abraham Schreter Lodge of B'nai B'rith, died Sunday of heart failure at Sinai Hospital.Services for Mr. Schreter, who was 88 and lived in the Strathmore Towers Apartments, were held yesterday at the Beth Jacob Congregation, of which he and his father, Abraham Schreter were founders.He also was a founder of the B'nai B'rith Lodge named for his father and had been named an outstanding lodge president by the state organization of B'nai B'rith.

When Columbia accountant Stuart Goldman thinks of Christmases past, what comes to mind are wailing sirens, traffic accidents and domestic disputes.Yesterday was no different: Mr. Goldman ended up spending the holiday at the local police station, along with several friends.He was happy about it. So were the police in Howard and Baltimore counties: When Mr. Goldman and his pals are there, a few grateful officers get Christmas Day off.Each year for the past decade and a half, Mr. Goldman and other members of the Jewish service organization B'nai B'rith Columbia Lodge have volunteered to answer the phones to handle non-emergency calls for police, fire and 911 operators in Howard County.