Rabbi Jack Bemporad wants it known that the visit he organized of eight Muslim-American leaders to concentration camps was a historic success.

Bemporad, director of the Carlstadt-based Center for Interreligious Understanding, called the Aug. 7 to 11 trip to Auschwitz in Germany and Dachau in Poland “a breakthrough in many respects, because … we took imams like [Yasir] Qadhi, for example,” who 10 years ago called the Holocaust a hoax. (Bemporad led the trip, which was sponsored by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, with Prof. Marshall Breger of the Catholic University of America.)

Following is a statement issued by the Muslim leaders who visited Auschwitz and Dachau last month.

“O you who believe, stand up firmly for justice as witnesses to Almighty God.” (Holy Qu’ran, al-Nisa “The Women” 4:135)

On Aug. 7-11, 2010, we the undersigned Muslim American faith and community leaders visited Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps where we witnessed firsthand the historical injustice of the Holocaust.

Members of Temple Emanu-el of Closter, led by Rabbi David-Seth Kirshner, recently returned from an 11-day family b’nai mitzvah trip to Israel.

Nearly 80 members of the congregation (20 families) participated in the trip, held Aug. 16 to 27, visiting sites from the Western Wall to Masada.

The Yom Kippur fast is not intended to be a picnic. But fasters pleading for repentance don’t have to make themselves sick over it either, say health and nutrition experts.

There is a plethora of advice out there for those who want to have an easier time of it come Kol Nidrei, says Shannon Gononsky, a Teaneck-based dietician who observes the Yom Kippur fast religiously.

Fasting doesn’t have to be hard on your body if you prepare properly, she says.

JERUSALEM – By now it would seem that Israelis are accustomed to calls for boycotts of Israeli products and institutions.

Many, however, may have been caught off guard this summer when those calls came from inside Israel.

In two separate incidents over the past few weeks, Israelis issued a call for boycott or announced a boycott of an Israeli institution for political reasons. One protest came from the right, directed at an Israeli university with allegedly “anti-Zionist” professors on staff; one came from the left, directed at an Israeli theater in the west bank.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is backing a proposal by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meet every two weeks during peace talks.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu has stated privately and publicly that he hopes to meet with President Abbas every two weeks,” George Mitchell, the senior administration official brokering talks, said in a briefing Tuesday, two days before the formal start of direct talks. “We think that is a sensible approach.”

Robert M., 58, worked for a news organization in the San Francisco Bay area until September 2008, when he lost his job in layoffs that eliminated 15 percent of the company’s workforce nationwide.

Robert had eight months worth of savings. They ran out in six months.

After 14 months of unemployment, in December 2009 Robert turned to San Francisco’s Jewish Family and Children’s Services for help with rent, utilities, and, hardest of all, food.

PARIS – With a preponderance of voices from the international media, human rights groups, the French clergy, and some politicians denouncing French President Nicolas Sarkozy for fueling negative ethnic stereotypes with his new immigrant-focused security crackdown, many Jewish community representatives in France are taking a more measured stance.

In July, Sarkozy launched some security-related initiatives that included a proposal stripping French nationality from foreign-born individuals who attack police officers and starting a program to rapidly deport Roma — or Gypsy — migrants to Romania and Bulgaria. The French leader also is dismantling hundreds of illegal Roma homes in shantytowns in France.